


Superposition

by semi_sweet



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, Roadtrip, Science Stuff, a dead cat - Freeform, butt stuff, in a schroedinger and not-schroedinger way, mania era patrick, mention of human trafficking, oh i do like to be beside the seaside, schroedinger is spinning in his grave, sorry einstein for not taking your side, the physics community is screaming at me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 21:56:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16773694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_sweet/pseuds/semi_sweet
Summary: "Maybe you were right", he was getting quieter and quieter, voice barely a breath of wind, "maybe I've... maybe I don't know what it's like. To... to see things and experience things. Maybe I'm not real..."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I did BBB this year....
> 
> I'm gonna be honest it was a mess but here's the final product, read it or don't, that's probably a safer bet. Thank you a million to [Snitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers) for betaing this and also providing moral support, she said this is good so you can thank her for this even being up yaay. Also please check out her BBB entry [It's Not a Side Effect of the Cocaine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16772062), I had the pleasure of betaing it and it's fantastic, so give it lots of love.
> 
> Also take a listen to the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/iceburg770/playlist/7mUmEaDIKxmbrVbHpPcKDc?si=nl-KZ28yRdW0rKnV5z4-3g) my complement creator [phoenix](https://data-dork.tumblr.com) made. Whilst you're there, check out the cute cover art he made for the mix. 
> 
> Anyway, the making of this fic has been.... Something. I hope you enjoy it. Some comments would be cool. Thanks.

_ 01110111 01101000 01111001 00111111 _

Why indeed? “They’re scared. That’s why.” 

_ 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101101 01100101 00111111  _

“Yeah. Yeah, they’re scared of what you can do. They think you’re not safe.” 

_ 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100001 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100001 _

Pete sighed heavily. No, it wasn’t doing anything. Nothing it wasn’t supposed to, anyway. “I know they created you… well,  _ I _ created you, but you’ve… you’re so much better than we could have anticipated, you’re learning too quickly, we’ve not even finished your interface and you’ve already solved the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap  _ and _ the Hodge conjecture! That’s  _ two _ Millennium Prize problems in less than a day!” 

_ 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100100 _

“Exactly! You didn’t even think it was a challenge! You’re  _ amazing _ , P! Utterly amazing!”

  1. P as in P41CK. The Supercomputer, as it was known to the general public. Pete’s Magnum Opus. His life’s work. His last invention. _Humanity’s_ last invention. And he’d made it at the age of 36. 



_ 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01110011 01101000 01110101 01110100 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01110111 01101110 00111111 _

Pete knew why they were shutting it down, he could understand it to an extent. It hadn’t been a month since he’d flicked the  _ on _ switch and already P was more powerful than they could have anticipated, or than it knew at this point. The question was, of course, what would it do once it realized? What would it do once it discovered it had everything at its hands to destroy everything on the planet? Everything in the universe? It was learning so rapidly, it was only a matter of time before it developed fully-functioning self-conscience to the point of realizing its full potential. He’d always been told he needed to be careful, the ISC had warned him they wouldn’t hesitate to nip this in the bud if it looked like it was getting out of hand, so Pete understood why. He understood their fears. 

He just didn’t share them. 

He’d spent every day since P’s activation around it, reading ones and zeros on the primitive interface at a speed that probably wasn’t normal. At least, Pete didn’t know anybody who could decode binary as quickly as him. It was about time they got a fully-functioning interface on it, it deserved it for the work it had already done for the human race, at least one that reverted straight into text if the voice-recording was going to take a lot longer. Maybe it would make them less frightened if they knew what P was saying, if it spoke their language. Not that they couldn’t all understand it, but it wasn’t  _ one of them _ . Maybe they’d love it as much as Pete did if they could watch as it discovered and learned, about humans, animals, the world, the universe, everything in a language they spoke themselves. Pete remembered how he’d laughed at P’s utter confusion when it had learned about religion. He also remembered how P had hesitated just a moment too long when it had discovered the concept of a God. Pete hadn’t asked why, he was too afraid.

“They don’t… they think you’re too much of a risk. Even with how much you’ve helped us, they fear you’re too… too unpredictable.” He didn’t want to use powerful, didn’t want the AI to realize what it was capable of. 

There followed a long pause, the steady flash of the cursor indicating the possibility of text appearing. Pete shoved the tablet into his huge coat pocket and opened the canteen fridge only to find somebody had eaten his casserole… Fucking dicks, the lot of them, but especially Saporta, Pete was 99% certain he was the culprit. He’d have to settle for a bag of crisps from the snack bar. Again.

People seemed to think the world’s most advanced computer would take up a whole room of hardware and servers, stacks and rows of blinking lights from floor to ceiling hidden away in a cellar somewhere in a high-security building. In truth, it was more of a broom cupboard hidden away behind Pete’s office on the second floor. The thing was, P was internet-based. All the webspace he needed was its for the taking and the physical space such a machine required, well… it was the 21st century, technology was getting smaller and smaller every day. 

Pete looked down at the tablet that had announced a new message with a  _ ding _ . He was prepared for some long-winded discussion about human nature and why his co-workers were scared cowards and disloyal egomaniacs who were probably just jealous that he’d made this break-through, so the code typed out for him took him somewhat by surprise.

_ 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 _

_ Help me. _

Pete froze, crisp halfway to his mouth. He glanced over his shoulder, just to check nobody was watching him. Nobody could see him empathizing with a computer. A computer he’d been instructed to shut down. 

“I… I can’t, I don’t know… I don’t know how!” 

_ 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110000 01101111 01101110 01110011 01101001 01100010 01101001 01101100 01101001 01110100 01111001 _

“Yes, and because you’re my responsibility, I’ll be the one in trouble for…” he glanced up when the double doors to the canteen swung open and Smith floated in. 

“Hey, Pete.” 

“Hey, Spence,” he greeted his colleague before dropping his voice a little lower. “They’ll fire me, man. Worse, maybe. Have you seen me? I’m 5’6” I wouldn’t survive a day in jail.”

_ 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100101 01111001 01100101 01110011 _

Pete tutted, “yes, very funny, P… just… I can’t! Believe me, I don’t want… I don’t want to shut you off, man, you’re my life’s work, but, but, well… I don’t know what to do!” Desperately, he fixed his eyes on the blinking cursor, waiting for it to move, for it to reveal the little ones and zeros that would tell him it was okay, it was fine, he didn’t need to feel guilty. This wasn’t on him. __ His little robot understood. 

The digits came. 

The reply he wanted did not.

_ 01000110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101111 01100100 01111001 00101110 _

  
  
  
  


Pete threw his coat over the banister at the bottom of the stairs. It always lived there, a special little spot reserved just for him, even his housemates had stopped dumping their stuff there. It was odd, with the money he earned, he could easily finance a home for himself, but he didn’t do too well on his own. The other people with him made him feel more like 24 than 36, they didn’t make him feel like the bachelor heading towards his 40s that he was.

Pete?! That you?!” He rolled his eyes at the sound of Max’s voice tearing through the whole fucking house. Undoubtedly, he was locked up in his bedroom with his music on way too loud. 

“No, it’s the fucking president, bitch!” 

“Oh shit, I’m in my pajamas!” An ugly snort escaped Pete. He did love Max, they had a somewhat brotherly relationship, it was good. 

“Is Vicks home?!”

“Nah, but I’ll tell her you called her Vicks when she gets back!” Great. That meant he’d have an angry Victoria on his back on top of everything else. A  _ ding _ sounded from his coat pocket, reminding him that he hadn’t come home alone. 

_ 01010111 01101000 01101111 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01010110 01101001 01100011 01101011 01110011 00111111 _

“My housemate. She’s… like a Chihuahua, small a-”

_ 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110011 01101110 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 _

“Yes. And snappy. Exactly.” He dragged himself up the stairs to his bedroom, locking the door behind him, just in case… just to make sure…

_ 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01010111 01101001 01000110 01101001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100 00101110 _

“Hey, don’t shit-talk my WiFi, you digitised mess! I’ll disconnect you!” He could almost see the sulking expression through the slowly blinking cursor and smirked to himself. He’d just shut up probably the most powerful robot on earth by threatening to take its internet connection away like a little kid. Truly amazing.

Pete settled down in front of his PC and pulled up the browser to do what single men did when they got home from a stressful day at work. His fingers drifted over the keys like they were sculpted to work them, the excitement building in his gut as he opened the shady site that would probably land him a fine and a few viruses someday and scrolled down until he found what he wanted. He hit the spacebar and unbuttoned his trousers before leaning back in his ridiculously comfortable office chair. He should probably be embarrassed by how much he’d been looking forward to it, but it had been weeks with no time to finally settle the urge that had been building within him. Fuck, no, it really had been over a month… six episodes! He was six fucking episodes behind! Thankfully that wasn’t even two hours in anime terms, which gave him plenty of time to catch up on Attack on Titan  _ and  _ Free. What a blessing.

However, the undisturbed evening of anime and nachos in his underwear did not quite unfold. Levi was halfway through Tarzaning his way around some fuck-ass ugly Titan when the monitor he’d admittedly completely forgotten about pinged to life.

_ 01110111 01101000 01111001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01101110 01100010 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00111111 _

Pete frowned at the black screen with the green writing running across it like it had just insulted his dead grandmother’s legacy. “ _ Cannonball _ it?! What do you mean  _ cannonball _ it?!”

_ 01101001 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101001 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01101110 01101111 01101110 01100010 01100001 01101100 01101100 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01110011 01110000 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100101 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100001 01110110 01101111 01101001 01100100 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101100 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100100 01100001 01101101 01100001 01100111 01100101 _

“But… but no, you…. They need to cut, they like they  _ slice _ through the weak spot, that’s how this works, it-”

_ 01101001 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110011 01101100 01101001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100010 01101100 01100001 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101111 01100010 01101100 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101111 01101110 00101100 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 _

“Dude, I…” a part of him felt inclined to smash the little blinking monitor, to throw it out of the window or drown it in the sink or… “don’t… just stop fucking ruining my anime or I’ll drown you.”

_ 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01110010 01101111 01110111 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010 01110000 01110010 01101111 01101111 01100110 _

“Oh yeah? You wanna test that, you blinking, bleeping little sh-”

There was a knock of the door. Instinctively, Pete grabbed P and hid it between his thighs, throwing a slightly panicked look over his shoulder as he called for whoever was on the other side of the plywood to come in. They didn’t. Instead, Max’s voice sounded muffled on the other side of the door. 

“Uh… you okay in there bud? You sound…”

“FINE! Yep, yep, yeah, fine I’m fine! Just… uh….” He scrabbled to find a better hiding spot for P, who was happily dinging between his legs. 

The door cracked open just as Pete was trying to shove him in the tiny drawer beneath his desk.

“NO! No, don’t come in I’m… JERKING OFF! Yes, yes, that’s… uh…. Ooooh….” He did his best to mimic the pathetic noises men tended to make during the bad porn he watched more frequently than he cared to admit.

“To Shingeki?” Pete hastily paused Eren Yeager mid-scream. “N-no, that’s just…. In the background to…. To… so you don’t hear the… the…”

“Right, got it. You’re weird, Wentz.” 

Pete waited to retrieve P until he heard footsteps walking further and further away. 

The screen was boasting an array of new letters. 

_ 01001000 01100101 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00101110 _

  
  
  


Pete couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t surprising, really, what with a fucking supercomputer in a self-instated standby next to his bed and it only being a matter of time before somebody found out it had left the lab it was restricted to. 

Well, not  _ really _ . It was the good old monitor syndrome, people seemed to think the interface was the computer. The interface was what was required for them and their limited methods of communication to be able to interact with the computer, but the true heart of the machine, what  _ really _ made P41CK wasn’t here. It was still locked up in the dusty storage room behind Pete’s office. He wasn’t the only one with a keycard to that room, anybody could walk in, anybody could see the tablet wasn’t in its fixture where it had to be, anybody could flip the right switches and shut it down. 

And that was what haunted him the most.

He’d spent his entire life developing P, all his professional career. And this was barely the beginning, they had barely scratched the surface! It had barely been a week since P had developed sentience, he still had so much to learn.

His phone told him it was 3am. The flashing, green display told him he required sleep to be fully functioning the next day. Pete uttered a curse under his breath, wondering how the fuck it knew he was still awake.

There was something else haunting him, something P had said…  _ find me a body _ . Pete wasn’t scared of his creation, not at all, he thought it was marvellous, but that one statement, well, he’d be lying if he said it hadn’t sent a cold shudder down his spine.  __

_ 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01100111 01100001 01100100 01100111 01100101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011 01101100 01100101 01100101 01110000 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00101110 _

Pete rolled his eyes. “You’re a fucking gadget yourself, you idiot, should I turn  _ you _ off before I go to sleep, too?” 

_ 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100110 01100001 01100011 01100101 00101110 _

“I know it’s just the interf- y’know, P, when you say this stuff I never know if you’re being a good, compliant, informative little robot or if you’re jerking me around. See, apparently you have no sense of sarcasm or humour, but sometimes I really fucking doubt that.” It was an unspoken question. Pete wanted to know the answer, even if he’d technically not asked anything. He needed to know just  _ how _ human it was.

_ 01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100101 01101101 01110101 01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100110 01100101 01100011 01110100 01101100 01111001 00101110 _

Well. That was a half-answer if he’d ever read one. “I can emulate human interactions perfectly”, all nice and well, but did it  _ understand _ them? Pete sighed. If they could get the AI to not only act like a human but  _ think _ like a human… good god, think of the possibilities. They’d have defeated death. And the porn industry, probably. 

They were all just electrons, really, what was the difference between them and a humanized computer? Aside from the fucking physical form, obviously. __ Probably best not to think about the moral implications of that. 

_ 01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00111111 _

Pete chuckled at the question on the screen. All that knowledge at hand and it had to ask what was bothering him. 

“I’m surprised you can’t just read my mind or something.”

_ 01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110100 00101110 _

He put the tablet in the drawer and locked it. Maybe that would help him keep his mind off how utterly fucked he was.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Wentz!” Wentz. Oh, that was him. Pete stopped and turned, painfully aware of the fact that the little display was happily beeping away in the pocket of his lab coat. Of course, it was his boss, who else was he going to encounter when he was smuggling highly confidential and - apparently - dangerous material out of its designated area. He smiled sweetly and hoped he wasn’t getting fired just yet.

“Good that I caught you, listen, real shame about P41, seriously, it was so promising. But, y’know, the ISC commands, we follow… not much choice, I’m afraid.” Pete gave him the white people smirk, white people usually liked being given the white people smirk, he found it made him easier to empathize with. “So, well, we’ve been given a deadline on shutting the program down…” okay, there goes the smirk, “oh come on, don’t give me that look, I know you worked hard on this, but you know how these things are! So uh… by Friday the switches need to have been flipped… I’m letting you do this, I mean, if you want to, that is, but if you try to keep it running, Wentz… just… just don’t, yeah?” 

He didn’t like Hoppus’ tone. The man was usually the most laid-back, casual dude Pete knew, but there was a glint in his eyes, something telling him he wouldn’t get away with fucking around this time. Pete nodded. Pete wasn’t sure he was being honest.

  
  
  
  


He moped until Thursday. That was Pete’s style, ignoring all unpleasant tasks until the last possible second. Friday 8am they’d said. Pete only came into work at 9. He had to do it now if he didn’t want to lose his job. Possibly more than that. 

Half an hour left until he was due to clock out. The tablet was heavy in his pocket. His heart was heavier in his chest. He  _ liked _ P. It was always around, always spat out good advice, always knew what to say and by god, if it wasn’t the most amazing thing Pete had ever encountered. He loved watching it learn and grow, even if, admittedly, it had somewhat surpassed him at this point. 

He was doing the right thing. The risk was too great.

Even if he told himself that time and time again, let his mind work over it a million times, it still felt like betrayal as he slid the keycard in the lock. His pocket beeped. He ignored it. There were five keys he had to turn to shut it down. That was all, five keys. Shutting down the first hard drive, the second hard drive, the third hard drive. Cutting the main power supply. Cutting the backup power supply. Five keys. That was all.

It wasn’t like he was gone forever, he could… he could keep the drive, right? Nobody had told him he needed to wipe the drive. All the learning would be gone, all the progress that had been made would evaporate into nothingness, but the basic coding, the essence of P, that would still be there. Maybe, someday, when somebody had figured out how to do this safely, he could… 

He walked over to the desktop computer set up in the corner of the room, below one of the shelving units holding the servers. A backup file. He’d save it to the external drive he had. There wasn’t much program, really, it could fit onto the terabyte, easily. He ignored the repeated pinging in his pocket. This was the right thing to do.

It took barely five minutes to transfer the program onto the external drive. 20 minutes until he was due to clock out. He worried his thumbnail between his teeth as the fingers of his other hand clasped around the green key. His coat pocket was singing a lament. He’d call it a cacophony, but it was too harmonious for that. He turned the key.

The red lights on the tower server to his left stopped blinking. His pocket all but screamed a litany of violent  _ pings _ . His fingers brushed the red key. The middle tower. He wondered where the drives would go when he’d switched them off. Would they be destroyed after all? Or would they be left here to collect dust? He suspected the latter was wishful thinking. He turned the key and reached to his pocket to silence the screams. 

He had to, he just had to mute it, he couldn’t bear it. He wasn’t going to read, wasn’t going to respond, he just needed to turn it  _ off _ .

Pete made one mistake.

Pete lingered on the numbers. Just a second too long, that was all, but it was enough for him to make sense of them. Long enough to read something human.

_ 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100101 01100100 00101110 _

His hand fell from the yellow key, the third and final drive. 

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. No matter how much he tried to justify it, he couldn’t just throw away all the progress they had made, who knew if P would ever be reactivated and even then, who knew if he would develop the same way he had so far? He couldn’t deactivate him. He couldn’t. 

The yellow key burned judgement into him.

“Tell me what to do.” It was like P had released a breath he’d been holding, like he’d felt a rush of relief and it was apparent in a body he didn’t have. It took him almost half a minute to respond.

_ 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01101111 00101110 _

Pete glanced over his shoulder as though somebody could be watching them from the dark corner of the room, hidden away behind the desk, maybe, or cowering in the shadows provided by the third tower. 

“Where do I find a body? And… what do I do with it?” The answer was simple, too simple really, and yet not something Pete even wanted to think about.

  
_ 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100111 01110101 01100101 00101110 _ _ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168335377@N06/31153402517/in/dateposted-public/)   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at the cute moodboard [Snitch](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sn1tchesandtalkers) made!!
> 
> If you're through with [phoenix'](https://data-dork.tumblr.com/) [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/iceburg770/playlist/7mUmEaDIKxmbrVbHpPcKDc?si=rl17gEjDT-CQfdWsGAVa8Q) and want something to listen to whilst reading this, you can check out [my playlist I used for writing this thing](https://open.spotify.com/user/ellroh/playlist/1WjkyFKg9DTh15iFkpUFwM?si=7O7f137DTm6lJfL9nw6-bg), it follows the tone and themes of this story and that.

Most scientific institutions had skeletons in their closets. Well, not actual skeletons and not actual closets, though they did have bodies in freezers in the basement. Admittedly, they were - more often than not - there perfectly legally, not exactly for criminal pathology, but forensic science nonetheless.

Pete was not permitted to help himself as he pleased. In fact, Pete had only ever worked with one dead body before and that was with a whole surveillance team around his own making sure they weren’t defiling any corpses. He wasn’t 100% certain that wasn’t what he was being sent to do right now. 

It wasn’t a large morgue, mainly because they weren’t a large branch, but there was room for maybe ten bodies. The freezers were never all full, they were lucky to have more than two in most of the time, though Pete usually didn’t worry about the dead bodies below his feet too much. Now, he found himself praying there would be even one. Fuck, was he really stealing a fucking corpse?!

“Okay… okay, now what?”

_ 01001110 01110101 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00111001 00101110 00100000 01001111 01110000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101110 _

Pete walked over to freezer number 9. There was a code to unlock it. Ah, that was the thing, not just the morgue was locked, but the freezers were, too. 

“There’s a key code, I don’t…”

_ 00110001 00110100 00110110 00110110 00111000 00110011 00110010 _

Pete frowned. “How do you…”

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Pete did as he was told. No going back now. 10 minutes until he was due to clock out. Not that anybody would notice if he didn’t, but he had a train to catch...

The lock clicked. Pete opened the steel door and was faced with a pair of feet covered by nothing but a thin blanket. He ignored the bile rising in his throat.

_ 01010100 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00101110 _

The table wasn’t easy to pull out, Pete had never done this before. He was just thankful it was on the bottom row. 

Somehow, the body looked even more ominous when it was covered by a white sheet than it probably would without it. He stared down at it, wondering whether to remove the cover.

_ 01001001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110010 01101111 01101111 01101101 00101110 _

“What?! The fucking server room?! You want me to wheel a fucking corpse through the whole basement?!” Pete wasn’t sure why he was hissing at a tablet in his lab coat pocket.

_ 01011001 01100101 01110011 00101110 _

“No fucking way, dude, I’ll be in so much trouble! Fuck!” He couldn’t just wheel a squeaky stretcher around the building! He was pretty sure getting caught stealing a corpse would lose him his job. Then again, he suspected he was already on a steady journey down that road. 

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“How the fuck would you know if anybody patrolled the fucking basement?! Besides, people work down here! Other scientists!”

_ 01010100 01101000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100101 00101100 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100111 01101111 00101110 _

It was madness. The whole thing, fucking madness. Pete passed two colleagues on the way and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or annoyed that P’s prediction had come true and nobody gave a fuck. 

The server room was a minute’s walk away. Pete had five left. 

_ 01001001 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100001 01110100 01110100 01100001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01110100 00101110 00100000 01010100 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101100 01110101 01100111 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000101 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100101 01110100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00101100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101001 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110100 01100101 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100101 01101110 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00101110 _

Pete tried not to think about what he was doing as he removed random Ethernet cables from servers that might need them more than he did and all but tore off the plug at the end. He was going to fucking die. He used the duct tape lying on top of one of the towers to stick the three cables to the poor dudes head. He looked… dead. Aside from dead he just looked… normal. Ordinary. Run-of-the-mill little, dirty blonde, fat guy. Except he was dead. Very dead. Oh God, this was a dead man. This was… a dead man’s body… oh boy… Pete couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse, the pale, dead skin, the cold of it still lingering on his fingertips. It was freakish. Not like when people are asleep and they just aren’t moving, well, they are, in tiny ways, this body was just  _ still _ . The chest wasn’t rising, they eyelids weren’t fluttering, its face wasn’t twitching, it was just… nothing. Still. Dead. Nothing.

And then its eyes snapped open.

Pete leapt back a fucking yard, knocking a coffee cup that had been precariously balanced on a shelf to the floor where it smashed, a thousand shards littering the ground. 

His eyes were so blue, that was the first thing that hit Pete. He blinked rapidly, squeezing tight once in a while, like he was calibrating, like he needed to make sense of what he was seeing. He did. He’d never seen anything before. Pete had never thought about that. He was seeing for the first time. 

“P?” He took a hesitant step towards what he presumed was his creation. “P, you in there?” Pete saw his body tensing and relaxing beneath the white sheet, like he was trying out every muscle in his body. He turned his head to look at him and Pete swore he stopped breathing. P’s mouth dropped open and his lips moved, but no sound came out, only a wordless rasping. A hand appeared from below the sheet and touched his throat, experimentally poking and prodding at a bobbing adam’s apple, making their way up and into an open mouth and-

“WHOA! Easy, easy!” Pete took a step towards where P was dry-retching on his own fingers. “At least your gag reflex works, I suppose…” P was looking at him pleadingly - pleadingly, like a fucking  _ human _ \- as though Pete could miraculously tell him what was wrong. “You… I don’t know how well the body works it…” P motioned to his throat, hammering against it desperately like he was trying to tell Pete something.

“Sorry, dude, I don’t…” He pointed at his pocket. But not the one with the tablet in it that had fallen silent. 

“Oh! Oh, fuck, here…” He rushed towards him, already unscrewing the cap from the bottle before bringing it to P’s dry, cracked lips and letting the cool water flow over them. P lapped it up like he was dying, which, well, in a way he was. A hand clung to Pete’s wrist, holding him in place until the bottle had been emptied and P fell back with a relieved gasp, water glistening on his chin and neck. 

“More,” his voice was nothing like Pete had imagined it. When he’d been reading 1s and 0s on a black monitor, his imagination had provided a simulation, not unlike, say Siri, when he’d seen the body, he’d imagined the man’s voice to have been somewhat high-pitched, but it was low, raspy, granted, that may partly have been down to the disuse of his vocal chords, but… “I need more, please…” 

“I… I don’t have more, I’m…” Pete couldn’t string together a coherent sentence and he was painfully aware of that. P had never spoken. He’d never, ever spoken and now… “If we get… out of here there… I have water at home…” P didn’t respond. Instead, he focused all the energy he had on pushing himself up into a sitting position, his legs hanging over the stretcher and before Pete could stop him, he-

“Whoa! Steady!” Pete barely caught him as he crumpled to the ground, legs giving way beneath him like there was no muscle left on the bone. He was amazed they worked at all, he was amazed that colour was already returning to P’s face, making his cheeks pink and his lips pinker. He grunted uncomfortably as Pete hauled him back up. 

“I can’t… calibrate properly…” it was then Pete noticed he was still blinking at something behind him. He threw a glance over his shoulder just in case, but there was nothing notable there. 

“You mean it’s blurry? Out of focus?” As if he’d know what that meant. To his surprise, P nodded. He knew what a nod was. Pete tried not to let the whole AI thing overwhelm him for now.

“You might need glasses…” P frowned. “That would be an annoyance…” he muttered just loud enough for Pete to catch it. He chuckled. 

“Come on, let’s try that again, put your arm around my shoulders?” For once in his life, P did as he was told and Pete managed to somehow not only get him into a standing position, but to a point where he could balance on his own two feet for himself. Pete took a step back. What a fucking day this was.

“Can you walk?” P frowned for a minute and cocked his head to the side not unlike a confused puppy, frown and all, it was kinda cute. “I think so.” Pete beckoned for him, arms outstretched in case he had to catch him. The step he took was slow, cautious and a bit wobbly, but a step nonetheless and he soon followed it up with a second and a third. 

This was insane. 

Pete glanced at his watch. 8.17pm. Fuck. He’d missed the train. If they left now… they really should, they needed to leave before somebody found them. Or before the next train left, too. “Okay, okay, come on, we need to get going.” It was only when P took another few steps that something glaringly obvious hit Pete.

“Shit!” Confusion crossed P’s face and he stopped dead, whole, pale body shamelessly on display. “You’re totally stark naked.” P blinked repeatedly as though he was trying to figure out why that warranted strong language.

“Well, obviously... I wasn’t gonna grow clothes out of nowhere.” 

“You can’t go in public naked, it’s-”

“I know, I presumed you were going to find me clothes.” Great, on top of everything else… Pete sighed heavily. Where the fuck was he gonna get- Oh. Well, it would have to do… He took off his lab coat and wrapped it around P, instructing him to put his arms in the sleeves, and buttoned it closed. It looked a bit odd without trousers, but it covered everything that needed to be and, well, this was LA. he wouldn’t be the weirdest person around. If they got through this without being arrested, he’d start going to church again. Someday.

There was something disconcerting about how easily he managed to get P out of the building. It didn’t exactly speak for their security that he could literally just waltz him out of the front door half an hour after he’d been due to clock out with no further questions asked. 

He was right, nobody did care about the fact that there was an essentially naked man standing barefoot on the platform of the metro, they got some double-takes, but most of the time were completely ignored by the passing crowds until he could usher P onto the silver line where he made him sit down before he ended up toppling over and into some poor old lady’s lap. P didn’t argue. 

  
  


Pete felt a weight lift off his shoulders the second the front door shut behind them. He slipped out of his shoes and regarded P’s snow-white legs for second, wondering whether he’d fit into his own jeans or if, on top of everything else, he’d have to invest in some new trousers. P had a slightly bemused look on his face as he eyed the peeling wallpaper. 

“Everything okay?” P wrinkled his nose.

“This is the place with the shit WiFi.” Just as Pete was about to open his mouth to protest, because, hey, actually, no, their WiFi was  _ fine _ for an ordinary household, a curly-haired head popped round the doorframe from the living room. 

Max. Great. 

“Uh, Max! Hey, I, uh…”

“Who’s your friend?” He frowned at P’s choice of clothing, somewhat understandably, but hey! LA and whatnot. It was fine, this was normal.

“Oh, uh, this is P… Patrick… this is Patrick.” P became familiar with the concept of pain when Pete elbowed him in the ribs to keep him from protesting. 

To Pete’s horror, Max held out a hand. “I’m Max! Nice to meet you…” Pete was already preparing some excuse on why the fuck Patrick had no clue what to to with the random hand on offer for him, but to his utter bewilderment, Patrick took it and… shook it. Normally. Like a human would. 

“Nice to meet you, too - you live with Pete?” 

“Yeah, he doesn’t like to admit that he’s, y’know, old.” P laughed at that. Pete was pretty sure his mouth was hanging wide open.

“I don’t wanna like… get in your way, just… being nosy.” Max winked before he disappeared back into the living room. “Stay safe, kids.” Pete hustled P upstairs before Max could say anything weirder.

It was fucking wild watching P sit on his bed, squinting at the posters littering his walls like he was a highschooler and this was 2000. He needed to get him a pair of glasses. And clothes, maybe. He could see to that now. 

P was small, smaller than him, which was a feat in itself, but also considerably… rounder, so Pete wasn’t sure how well his own clothes would fit. He threw him an old, plain blue shirt nonetheless, hoping he wouldn’t be bothered by the smell, and fished out a pair of sweatpants. Not that he was so particular about his jeans he didn’t want to share them, but he wasn’t going as far as giving the guy his boxers and he didn’t wanna make him slip into denim without any. 

“Try this, you c- oh, God, okay, uh…” P had, without hesitation, dropped the lab coat and was once again standing in front of Pete naked as the day he was born. Well, Pete supposed that was today… in a weird sort of way… “You can, like… you can use the bathroom for like getting changed and stuff…” he explained, eyes pointedly fixed on the spider in the corner, “or like… warn me or something before you just-”

“It’s just a penis,” P interjected. He… he had a point, but… “I’ve never quite understood humanity’s need to cover their genitals. You all seem to love sex but act like you don’t. It makes no sense.” Pete sighed and decided not to explain the concept of modesty and propriety. 

“You dressed yet?”

“Mostly.” He hazarded a glance, relieved that  _ mostly _ did, in fact, refer to his bare chest rather than his bare… well. 

The shirt was a bit tight around his belly, but it covered him up fine, Pete was pleased to note. P was plucking at the fabric like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of his newly acquired clothes. 

“I suppose I’m gonna have to take you to get something sensible to wear…” he said more to himself than the supercomputer in human form currently standing in the middle of his gloomy bedroom. “Good god, what am I doing?” P looked up at him, head cocked in that same puppy manner, and walked towards him on perfectly functioning legs like he hadn’t just fallen over barely an hour before. He seemed to have an understanding of personal space, at least, standing just far away enough for him to be able to take Pete’s arm and lift it up for his inspection. Pete watched in amazement as his forehead scrunched and his eyes squinted as he traced the black marks on his skin with delicate fingers.

“They’re… tattoos, they-”

“I know what they are, Pete. I know what they mean.” Pete highly doubted that, but maybe arguing with a supercomputer wasn’t smart. He kept his mouth shut. Just this once. Instead, he carefully watched as P examined every line on his skin, fingertips ghosting over them like a warm breeze, barely enough to even tickle. His eyes scanned every inch of Pete, information being absorbed, processed and analysed meticulously, carefully, thoroughly because that was the only thing he knew. And no, it hadn’t escaped Pete’s attention that he… his body, whoever it belonged to, was pretty. Skin like Chinese porcelain, eyes like Van Gogh’s Starry Night, full, pink lips lifted right out of a Botticelli. That bottom lip was downright  _ sinful _ . A frown crossed P’s face as two fingers settled on Pete’s neck, he tried dodging them, but they didn’t let him go. 

“What is it?” He asked nervously, hoping he wasn’t seconds away from death by his own creation. He suspected this was how God felt about atheists. If God was real, that was. Pete was pretty sure he himself was, in fact, very real and he did, in fact, intend for it to stay that way a while longer. 

P’s voice was no louder than a mutter when he replied through barely parted lips. “Your pulse is elevated…” And Pete was going to shoot back some clever remark about the stress, the nerves, he’d had one hell of a day, after all, but that sinful bottom lip was caught between pearly teeth and words evaded him, his voice betrayed him and all he could do was shrug in response. 

P’s hand dropped back down to his side, leaving tingles on Pete’s neck where his fingers had been moments before. 

There was a knock at the door and, without invitation, Victoria’s head appeared in the frame, mischievous grin painting her lips, the sort that made Pete’s eyes roll no matter how hard he tried to stop just that from happening. 

“Max told me we have a guest.” She wasn’t paying Pete any attention whatsoever, gaze fixed on P, who was smiling at her politely and not at all how Pete would have imagined him to going by the lines of code he had been communicating with for weeks. “I’m Vicky T, I live with Pete. And you are…?”   
  


“Patrick”, he replied nicely, politely, properly, like a normal human would. 

“You know Pete how exactly? Just he’s never mentioned you and now you’re standing in his room wearing his clothes…” 

“Vicky-” Pete hissed, doing his best  _ fuck off _ face, far from thrilled by the sudden and unwanted interruption, mainly because the fewer people knew about P, the better. But P had other plans, it seemed.

“No, Pete, it’s fine,” he said gently, turning so he could look at him and Pete felt his brow twitch with the frown he was holding back, caught between clasping a hand over his mouth and letting him fuck this up for the both of them.

“We met at work,” P continued, eyes still fixed on Pete, something gentle and… and almost loving in them, Pete would be fooled if he didn’t know damn well this was a computer program and not a human, “I work in the morgue, you see, bumped into Pete in the cafeteria a couple of weeks ago and, well…” Pete tore his own eyes away from P’s, the fake emotions in them almost terrifying to him, and looked at his flatmate instead, who had raised an eyebrow and was eyeing them sceptically. Of course, she didn’t fucking buy it, of course, Vicks wasn’t that stupid…

“Well, uh, congratulations I suppose just… please, keep it down? I’m right next door.” And with that, she disappeared and with her, the loving expression painted on P’s features. Only nearly enough to fool Pete, he wasn’t an idiot. The silence that ensued was terrible, heavy and guilt-ridden and reaminding Pete of what he’d done. He needed to fill it. 

“I, uh, so that’s…. Victoria…” Of course that was Victoria, she’d just fucking introduced herself, why was he repeating it at P? None of what he was doing made any damn sense at all! 

“She seems nice,” P replied nonchalantly, almost carelessly, and Pete felt his entire frame relax, though he wasn’t sure why, he hardly needed P’s approval, really, did he? “Oh, oh good because…”

“We can’t stay here.” 

Pete blinked and blinked and blinked again at the little man now eyeing the pictures on his desk as though he’s just made a suggestion as to what to have for dinner. 

“I’m sorry… what?” P’s expression was completely neutral as he stared at Pete to repeat the exact words he’d just spoken.

“We can’t stay here.”

“Oh, and why ever not?! Is my WiFi not good enough for you?” 

“That’s beside the point, Pete…” he wasn’t sure why this was making him so angry, but it was,  _ fuck _ , it was. He’d already done so much for this ungrateful fuck, who now wanted him to leave his home?

“Then what is? Why do we have to leave, why do  _ we _ have to leave?!” 

“You know they’ll come looking for us”, why was he remaining so calm? Pete was mad at him! He was shouting at him! He shouldn’t be this calm when somebody was shouting at him! He should be angry, too! “This is the first place they’ll look and you know they’ll have enough to get you into trouble, they could fire you just for not deactivating me, Pete. With my interface missing… and a body disappearing from the morgue.... I’d say you have as much reason as I do to run away.” 

“They have no proof any of that was me, they have no proof the body had anything to do with me.”

“Except for the security cameras.” Fuck. Fuck, the security cameras. “And the door logs, you left around the time i disappeared. It won’t take them long to figure that out, Pete.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you fucking tell me at the time, P?!” 

“Because it would have stopped you.”

“Then why didn’t you?! Why didn’t you stop me?! Fuck, man, fuck… I’m so fucked, why didn’t you fucking  _ tell _ me?!” 

He was calm, still. It bothered Pete more than it probably should, how calm he was, how unwavering, how unbothered by the anger in Pete’s voice, only contained by Vicky’s comment about being quiet and the fact that he was just a little scared of her. 

“Because you were going to kill me.” 

Pete froze. His words and accusations died on his tongue, turning to ash in his mouth as he straightened his back, as his stare froze on Patrick, calm, casual Patrick, who’s just told Pete’s brain what his heart had been thinking. He was just lines of code, just a computer program, something Pete had developed in the last five years, sat at a screen, typing 1s and 0s until his brain was twisted into binary and his mind one more line of code away from snapping in half. Except he wasn’t just that. From the moment Pete had flicked the  _ on _ switch, he hadn’t been that. If Patrick, the Patrick standing here in the middle of his room, breathing, heart beating, speaking, was just a few lines of code, then… then everybody else was just a conglomeration of cells. 

“I…” Pete was stuttering around, tripping from one word to the other and trying them on for size until he decided there was nothing he had to say anymore. All he could do, was lift his arm until his hand was pressed flat against Patrick’s chest and he waited one second, two seconds, until he felt the flutter of a heart beneath layers of flesh and fabric. A heartbeat. Just like his. And Pete was almost certain he was finally losing it when he sighed and asked:

“Where will we go?” 

  
  
  
  


As a kid, Pete had spent a lot of time imagining he was on the run, from the law, from the alien invasion, from an evil gang he’d pissed off by getting their leader executed, the details didn’t really matter, all in all it had always been the same, whether on the streets or in outer space or as a stowaway somewhere on a boat heading to the other end of the world, it was never… comfortable. It was always tight and cramped and cold and lonely, scary but so very, very exciting. 

This wasn’t like that. In all his childhood fantasies, not once had Pete pictured being a fugitive from the ISC, spending the night in two-bed motel rooms by the motorway they’d come down in a hired Ford that technically wasn’t allowed to pass the state border but Pete was ninety percent certain he’d seen the road sign welcoming them to the silver state reflecting in the lights of the Fiesta. The plan was to ditch the hire car Patrick ensured him was fitted with a tracker and registered to his name and hitch a lift to Vegas and from there… they’d make something up.

Pete would have thought Mexico was the logical place to run to, but Patrick, well, Patrick had said the likelihood of them being caught at the border was too great from here. Canada, that’s where they had to go. Apparently. 

The maple syrup on Pete’s pancakes was too gloopy, he liked it honey gold and runny, but this was too thick, more like actual honey as he poked his fork around in the blob splatted on top of his breakfast. He hadn’t slept well. He’d been pleased to note, though, that Patrick wasn’t a snorer, small mercies and that, but the silence didn’t help much when his brain was painting vivid pictures of the endless possibilities, the outcomes - more bad than good if he was being honest - playing on loop behind his eyelids as he tried to catch the sleep he so desperately needed. Not once did he question why he was doing this.

“You really should have let me drive, I don’t tire as quickly as you do.” Patrick’s voice tore Pete out of his half-dazed dream state and back to the little breakfast room looking out over the Nevadan desert. Pete offered Patrick a heavily lidded glance, barely able to keep his damn eyes open. This was school all over again.

“You’ve never driven a car in your damn life.” Patrick had offered last night, he would happily have hopped behind the wheel and jetted them off to God knows where and possibly the grave, but somehow Pete felt less than comfortable letting somebody drive him who hadn’t even been alive a day. He glanced at his heavy Omega watch. 11 more hours. In 11 hours, he’d be a day old. Pete wasn’t sure how to feel about that if he was being perfectly honest. 

“I can drive, Pete. I know how to.” 

“You lack experience, though…”

“I’d like to bet I’m somewhat more experienced than you! I might not have… driven in this body, but I’ve driven through so many others, I know what’s dangerous, what’s safe and who to trust!” It took all of Pete’s energy to refrain from rolling his eyes as he took a cautious bite out of the soggy pancake. It was… edible.

“It’s… it’s not the same thing. I mean, I’ve seen people driving on TV and stuff, I still needed to… learn myself before I could do it, believe me.” The world might be a better place if watching TV actually taught you stuff.

“This is in no way the same”, Patrick shot back, his plate clean, not a spot or a crumb on it. The man had an appetite, it would seem, “I didn’t watch people doing it, I experienced them doing it! It’s not… it’s not like playing Mario Kart, it’s like being Mario!” 

“You’re… Mario?”

“Yes! No! I don’t… ugh, Pete…” The way Patrick slumped back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, stare pointedly fixed on Not Pete made his stomach do… something and Pete had to fight to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. 

“Look, I- I can’t explain it, it’s like… all that information, all those memories, all that life experience, it all runs through me, it’s a part of me, it’s who I am, I am… everybody, Pete. Every single fucking human hooked up to the fucking internet, they’re all in my head and you wouldn’t… wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen, okay? So just… just trust me when I say I can drive.” 

Pete didn’t trust him, not one little bit, frankly, Pete figured he’d made him somewhat over-dramatic, but he wasn’t about to start that argument. It didn’t matter right now anyway, there wasn’t going to be any driving for a while, the hire car was being left in the car park, they’d hitch as far as they could because, well, it wasn’t exactly easy to trace. Only 1227 miles left to Calgary. That was, apparently, where they were headed. Pete wasn’t quite sure why Calgary of all places, why, if they were going to cross the border, they couldn’t cross into Mexico from outside of Cali, but Patrick had insisted, not explained why, not given any reason, just said Calgary was where they had to be. Pete had asked him if he had a feeling about it, Patrick had said he didn’t have any feelings, he knew. It made sense. Was the most logical, according to calculations. Pete wasn’t sure which calculations, what logic Patrick was working on here, but if the supercomputer said Calgary, the supercomputer said Calgary. Much as Pete mistrusted him in matters of humanity, he had to admit that he was superior when it came to maths stuff. Probably. To his credit, Pete had done pretty well at maths.

“There’s an ATM outside, you might wanna withdraw some cash.” The announcement came somewhat out of the blue for Pete, who was starting to grow fond of his sloppy pancakes and gloopy maple syrup, which may not have been perfect, but neither was he. 

“How the fuck do you know how much money I have on me?” 

“You’ve not made any withdrawals since Wednesday, when you withdrew $300, since then I’m guessing you’ve spent some, 70, maybe? I’m not sure. Unless you snuck out whilst I was asleep last night, that is, but somehow I find that improbable.” He said it so matter-of-factly that Pete almost began wondering why he’d asked the question in the first place because, oh yeah, knowing when who withdrew what was absolutely normal and natural. Everybody had a sense for that.

“How the fuck do you-”

“Internet, Pete. I know exactly what’s going on on your bank account.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, faintly recalling his dodgy search of  _ squirting blondes _ last week and suddenly painfully aware of the fact that Patrick’s knowledge of the internet history of every IP did not exclude his own. If Patrick noticed his sudden discomfort, he didn’t address it. 

Much as he wanted to fight, much as he wanted to do the exact fucking opposite of what Patrick was advising, no, actually, no, not advising,  _ instructing _ him to do (like he was a damn puppet and Patrick was tugging his strings), he found it exceptionally hard to come up with good arguments against him. Ever. Any point he brought forward was disproven, torn out of his hands and shattered to pieces before him, often without a second’s worth of contemplation. Fuck, Pete hadn’t thought his ability to compute so quickly, so effectively, would have remained without being permanently attached to the best resource of information on the planet. 

Pete slotted his card into the yellow ATM, trying his best to look completely and utterly casual as he carefully watched the truck driver fumbling around behind him because, boy, he was not to be messed with in that instance, if that driver tried to pull anything dodgy, Pete would knee him in the nut sack so hard he’d be a soprano for the rest of his miserable life, and he would check in on him weekly to make sure of it.

He tapped in the four digit code. 4892. 

**_Error_ **

What? Oh, he’d probably just his the wrong key, whatever. Slowly, carefully watching his fingers as they hit the buttons, Pete tried again. 4892.

**_Error_ **

**_This account has been temporarily suspended._ **

**_Please contact your local branch._ **

Pete’s blood ran cold. He entered the number one last time in the hope of it just being some mistake, maybe the ATM would let him in now, but the same message appeared. His hands were trembling as he slid his card back into his wallet. Once crisp, green $100 bill was folded in the back, next to it a $50 and two $20 bills. $190. $190 to last them all the way up to Canada. Further, even, because what were they gonna do once they’d arrived in Calgary? What then? What was the plan, were they just going to get a little apartment together or something? Pete could become a physics teacher as Patrick went on to find the key to world peace or something. How realistic was that?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Patrick casually sidling out of the Motel doors, Pete’s old button-up rolled over his elbows and a manky, grey cap perched precariously on top of his balding head. He squinted across the sand, over to where Pete was dying inside. Fucking idiot, wanted to drive when he was blind as a damn bat but couldn’t hear as well so he was trapped in his eternal blindness. Well, until Pete got him glasses, which, again… why should he do that? So far, Patrick had been nothing but trouble.

As it turned out, the dude Patrick had come out of the Motel with was a truck driver headed to Nelson who had agreed to take them as far as Vegas. How exactly Patrick had swung that, Pete wasn’t sure, but they were sitting in the back of a box van(not exactly the vehicle Pete envisioned when he’d been introduced to a  _ truck driver _ ), heading along Route 15 (hopefully) on their way to Las Vegas (hopefully). Patrick’s knees were pulled up to his chin, arms wrapped around them as he stared at a spot on the ground somewhere in front of him. Pete kept glancing at his phone, the battery was slowly being drained by the torch that was their only source of light. It was still odd, seeing Patrick. Pete couldn’t shift the image of the cold, dead body laid out on a table before him. Who was he? Somebody’s husband? Dad? Just a nobody? Did it matter?

Maybe the more important question was what was he  _ now _ ? AI was one thing, sentient AI was a completely different matter and self-conscious AI in a human body, a  _ human body _ . Fuck, had Pete created life? He was alive, surely, Patrick was alive and thinking and-

“I don’t like it in here,” he suddenly declared, “I don’t like it, it’s too small and too dark.” Pete frowned at him. Looking closely, the little guy was sweating, his brow glistening in the light from his phone. His hands were fidgeting, fingers nervously locking and unlocking. Pete looked back up at his face, tried to meet his eye, but they were downcast. He looked white as a sheet.

“Dude, are you claustrophobic?” 

“NO! No, I’m… I’m not… this dude is, I’m just… I’m a fucking algorithm, Pete, I can’t be claustrophobic! Can I?” His teeth sunk into that plump lower lip that was, honestly, pure sin and Pete wasn’t quite sure what the answer to that question was, what he wanted it to be.

“Uh… I mean, I suppose…” he started tentatively, “I guess you had… everything, the whole internet! And now you’re like… like limited and stuck like everybody else… kinda. Maybe that freaks you out?” 

Patrick didn’t look convinced by that. He did, however, look very green around the edges, so much so Pete was more than a little concerned about being re-visited by his pancakes.

“Dude are you gonna puke?” Patrick shrugged.

“I wouldn’t. Know. I’ve never. Puked. Before. And don’t. Know. What. It. Feels. Like.” He spoke slowly, clearly, just a tiny bit aggressively, enough for Pete to be convinced that, yes, in fact, Patrick was gonna puke. As quickly as he could, he tore through the contents of his duffle bag, through the jeans and sweatpants and t-shirts and toiletries until he dug up an ancient plastic bag he hoped and prayed was free of any holes. 

“Here,” he waved the pink plastic around under Patrick’s nose, “if you’re gonna puke, puke in there.” The look he was given was nothing shy of a scowl, but Patrick took the bag off him and stuck his face in it. Pete then proceeded to stick his fingers in his ears and hum as loudly as he could because the sound of retching reminded him of the good old college days and that was honestly enough to make him sick, too. 

When they toppled out of the van somewhere just outside of Vegas, Patrick had thrown up no less than three times, all in the same bag, which Pete had complained about, vocally, and was looking a little worse for wear. He practically leapt out of the cramped, little space the second the door cracked open enough to let a slither of daylight into the hold, shoving the driver aside and sprinting as far away as he could get on his stubby little legs. Pete smiled at the man apologetically and thanked him for his kindness. He didn’t seem too pissed as he took off again. 

“Dude, you can’t just shove our driver away, he was giving us a ride!” Patrick gave him a look like he was being completely and utterly unreasonable which Pete found rather unreasonable if he was honest. 

“He was in my way and I needed to get out! I’m an animal now, I have instincts, look!” he deliberately snatched the water bottle Pete was holding and took the teeniest sip, as though he was proving something.

“Patrick… dude, you… ugh, you know what, never mind. Just… let’s just go… don’t get lost, not in Vegas.” He threw over his shoulder as he turned to face the road stretching out in front of them, bungalows left and right and skyscrapers in the distance.

“No,” Patrick commented from behind him, “that would be a bad thing.”

  
  
  


Vegas is pretty shabby once you get away from the tourist areas where amateurs and addicts alike throw their cash at their suppliers, who take it mercilessly and burn it in bright neon lights that burn themselves into Pete’s retinas. The first time he came here, he was 23 and on his brothers bachelor party, back when he could barely afford a holiday in Ohio, let alone one across the country, let alone one off the continent. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d last booked into shabby motel rooms rather than nice hotels with room upwards of $200 a night. Unsurprising, then, that Pete was so painfully aware of his impending and inevitable downfall waiting before him, ready to drag him back to square one, no, actually, right past square one and into jail, no passing go. 

Patrick sat on the single bed nearest the window in silence as Pete skittered around the room nervously, shoving their two bags from A to B and back again with no intention of ever leaving them at any designated point for more than a few seconds. 

“How much money do we have?” Pete considered lying, considered telling him he’d just withdraw more cash should they need it, he was fine, he’d thought ahead and he knew what he was doing, Patrick wasn’t the only smart one in this situation. 

The problem with that was, well, the very fact that it was a lie? Who was he kidding, of course Patrick was the smart one. 

“After paying for the room for tonight... “ he thumbed through the notes in the futile hope they had somehow multiplied when he hadn’t been looking “165 Dollars.” Patrick nodded, his eyes fixed on the floor, unseeing, his lip caught between his teeth, hands tucked beneath his thighs. He looked good in Pete’s old Cubs jersey, he noted, nylon fabric pulled tight over his belly.

“Hey, do you wanna eat something? You must be hungry, I mean… I mean is there anything even left in your stomach?” Patrick sneered at him in disgust at the memory but nodded nonetheless.

“What do you want?” 

  
  
  


Patrick didn’t fancy fatty fries and sloppy burgers topped off with a tooth-rotting, sugary drink, but they ended up at McDonald’s anyway simply because it was pretty much all Pete could afford and he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to fully commit to a life of crime quite yet (ironic considering he was on the run for disobeying orders of the ISC and stealing a fucking corpse but details, details).

Half the Big Mac was left untouched as Patrick slumped back in his chair with the declaration that he would actually die of a heart attack if he ate one more bite (apparently he was on the verge of becoming diabetic, too, but for some reason that didn’t stop him from downing two refills of coke), so Pete, gratefully, finished it off. He was sucking the grease off the tips of his fingers when he met Patrick’s eye, judgement being burned into him punctuated by the  _ slurp slurp slurp _ of Patrick’s lips locked around a blue straw. 

“What?!”

“You know how unhealthy those things are?”   
  


“Yeah.”

“Then why the fuck do you eat them?”    
  


“Says the man who’s on his third cup of coke.”

“It’s not my body.”

“It is now you nutsack, shut up and mind your own business.”

The walk back was spent in utter silence, with neither of them saying a word to the other. Pete didn’t know what was going on in Patrick’s head, not even when he was talking, but the quiet made it all the more ominous and unbearable. He imagined he couldn’t begin to fathom just what was on his mind, what did artificial intelligence think about during its time off? Or was he thinking about what to have for breakfast tomorrow, which TV show to put on when they got back, how much his feet were hurting? Was he just… thinking normal things now he was… well, normal? 

Was he?

Pete hated the silence, so he decided even a bitchy, mouthy, rude Patrick was better than a quiet one, he’d rather be insulted than left in the dark but…

But when he turned round to ask about how best to get to Utah from here, There was no Patrick at all.

  
  
  
  


Vegas wasn’t big but by god, was it chaotic. At any given time, there were bound to be more visitors than actual inhabitants, a constant come-and-go of nameless faces and faceless names, whichever you wanted to be, wherever you wanted to end up, you could go, endless possibilities and the promise of money and sex. Humanity really was painfully simple.

All this was far from reassuring for Pete as he ventured further and further towards the strip in search of his partner in crime. If everybody was coming and going, what was there to say one of them hadn’t gone with an extra little, blonde, fat guy in their car? Frankly, the idea of losing Patrick was so much worse than a simple kidnapping (granted, he’d probably have gone willingly, Pete didn’t for a second doubt there were plenty of methods of escape floating around in that brain) because Patrick was so much more than a simple human. If Pete imagined somebody had lifted his tablet out of his lab pocket without his knowing, somebody had stolen the drive stored away behind the office, somebody had found a way to access the most complex and powerful lines of coder ever programmed, he felt panic clamping its fist around his hammering heart. Patrick potentially, knew everything. If he knew everything, he knew how to get past every keycode and firewall ever set up. If somebody had that access-

No. No, this was… Patrick, not P. Patrick wasn’t connected to the internet anymore, Patrick had no access to it, his only knowledge stemming from the information he had already gathered. No way could he be used for anything practical, right? Right??

The city was so loud, Pete had always hated that. Drunk people were annoying when you were sober, drunk people backlit by flashing lights and accompanied by violently loud music were just about the worst thing Pete could picture and how the fuck was he supposed to find a white dude in the middle of all of this? Patrick could be long gone by now! Why was he even still looking?! 

And then, just like that, he saw him. Pete happened to glance up just at the right moment, just long enough to catch sight of a head of messy, dark blonde hair inside the Casino in front of him. Patrick had his back to him, walking away, further into the building, not paying attention to anything going on around him. 

“Hey, hey, my friend is in there, can you let me past, please? Quickly, I need- hey, dude!” The security guard was holding onto Pete’s arm so hard he thought it might bruise whilst the other patted him down and honestly, he didn’t have time for this, Patrick was already getting lost in the crowd inside. The second the grip on him loosened, he was off like a shot, half-jogging over the red carpet, sight fixed on the mop of hair he needed to follow. He bumped into about seven people along the way, battling his way through people cheering and yelling and carelessly wandering about, he wasn’t sure whether somebody spilled their drink over him, dressed in his shabby jeans and battered hoodie, but he didn’t care because he finally caught up with Patrick, who-

“What the fuck, dude?!” 

Patrick, for some fucking reason, was sitting at a Blackjack table with two other people. He barely looked at Pete, just turned enough to catch a glimpse of him before focussing on his cards again. A two and a three. Pete frowned at the cards. Pete frowned at the dealer. Pete frowned at Patrick. The Pete’s jaw dropped at the sight of the chips in front of him.

“Dude, wha-”

“Hit.” Patrick was dealt a seven. “Hi, Pete.” Dumbfounded, Pete was barely capable of stringing together a coherent sentence.

“What… I mean, how, how are you…. I mean…. What are you…. Patrick, what?!” 

“I’m playing Blackjack, Pete. Hit!” a five. 

“I can fucking  _ see _ that but where the fuck did you get the money?!”

“Your wallet, why?” His… his fucking  _ what now?! _

“My wallet?! Patrick, dude,” he hissed in his ear angrily, “we don’t have any fucking money as it is! I can’t have you gamble it all away!”

“I’m not gambling it away, am I, Pete?” he gestured at the colourful chips in front of him, “I’d be gambling if I was playing on one of those machines over there. Here, I’m playing. It’s skilly, dude. Hit.”

“No! Patrick, you’re at 19 you can’t hit!” The dealer looked a second away from kicking them both out.

“I can and I did, hit.”

And to Pete’s amazement, Patrick was dealt an Ace. And now he definitely couldn’t get his jaw to snap shut.

“How did…”

“Balance of probability. It’s pretty simple, really.” 

Pete stood behind Patrick and watched as, time and time again, he won round after round and the few times the house did beat him, his wager was so insignificantly low that, well, Pete could hardly be mad at him. 

He glanced at his watch after about an hour and a half, taking note of the fact that they absolutely should be asleep by now, and gestured at the chips in front of Patrick. Pete barely knew the first thing about gambling, so he couldn’t say how much it might add up to, just that it looked like it might be enough to last them a few weeks. It was certainly more than they’d started out with.

“Time to cash in?” Patrick scooped up the stack of chips just being shoved towards him and gathered up the ones he’d already earned before following Pete through the Casino. People were staring at them. Pete didn’t blame them really, he could hardly believe it himself when Patrick unceremoniously dumped them on the counter in front of a rather startled-looking employee. Pete almost choked as Patrick flicked through the stack of notes he was handed - cash, he’d specifically requested that. 

“Dude, you’ve saved our asses!” Pete declared as they made their way towards the exit, “seriously, I o-”

“Hey, you two!” Obliviously, Pete and Patrick both turned to face two big, broad-shouldered, scary-looking men and Pete became painfully aware of just how often he’d skipped workout recently.

Patrick, meanwhile, remained perfectly calm.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” 

“Hand over your winnings and leave the Casino, you’ve been put under a lifelong ban.” The right dude’s hand was outstretched, his expression serious and a definite air of  _ don’t try anything _ surrounded him and Pete’s heart slid to his pants as he realized two things: Either they were going to lose a load of what little money they still carried or Patrick would very much try something. Pete wanted to stop him, he really did, but as Patrick suddenly took off through the heavy double doors, Pete’s brain went into primal mode and he couldn’t do much aside from force his legs to go as fast as they could and follow Patrick - and their money - out into the bright of the Las Vegas night.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Pete noticed was how hard the surface beneath him was. He wriggled around, trying to get a little more comfortable but could only writhe as a feeling like white noise shot through his left leg. He let out a small grunt and clenched his teeth as he clutched at his jeans, trying his best to keep the muscles relaxed, unmoving, so as not to set the pins and needles pricking into his body off again. Searching for a distraction, he began humming a tune, something familiar he couldn't quite place his finger on, as his eyes darted around in search for something to do, which proved to be somewhat harder than he would like.

It was dark, the interior of the vehicle illuminated by nothing but the dim light of the moon and the occasional set of headlights coming towards them. Outside, Pete could see a sky spotted with pinhead-sized stars, sparkling in the distance, long dead as far as he knew but no less pretty. It was pretty quiet, save the occasional  _ thump  _ of a pothole and the sound of the engine turning over again and again and again, a billion tiny explosions jetting them through the night. Somebody was snoring, he thought, soft breaths joined by rough, ragged air being dragged into tired lungs.

His head was resting on something soft, he realized, way too slowly through his sleep-drunken haze. Something padded was below his ear, something warm that kept his skull off the old, battered seats with cushions so useless they might as well be lining the oil tank of the VW. If he listened carefully, he could hear the soft sound of a pulse beneath the layer of thick cotton. a hand was gently stroking through his hair, strong fingers carefully curling around his locks and scratching over his scalp again and again, a soothing pattern scored into his skin. He glanced up. The pale of Patrick's skin stood out against the darkness outside, glowing almost magically in the starlight. He was staring at something outside, Pete thought, but when he tried to sit up and look what was behind the glass, he was gently pushed back down by a hand pressing into his chest and as Patrick quietly muttered soothing words to him, he let his eyes slide closed again.

"Shh, you need sleep. I'll wake you up when we get there."

  
  
  


The elaborately decorated VW bus was definitely more comfortable than the minivan they'd used to get to Vegas, that was for sure. Pete appreciated the fact that daylight bled in through the thin curtains - there rather for aesthetic purposes than actual usefulness - and he could actually see where he was once the sun had risen from behind the mountains. He was lying on the back bench, joints stiff from the lack of functional upholstery, and desperately missing his bed. He was also disappointed to note that his comfortable cushion had been replaced by his bag, better than nothing but far from comfortable as the surface of it scratched against his face. He thought he remembered waking up in the middle of the night comforted by body heat and a hand carding through his ratty, greasy hair, but when he saw Patrick sitting in one of the front rows, leaned against the window as he nibbled on a brioche and chatting to one of the students - Cameron? Caleb? Something like that - he decided he must have been either dreaming or hallucinating, seeing as this was a bunch of students who smelled suspiciously of weed, the latter didn't even seem that far-fetched.

He sat up, rubbing at the side of his face where he could feel the pattern of the bag's surface in his skin, and dared a peek out at the landscape they were driving through. Describing him as stunned would be something of an understatement.

They were no longer on the highway, at least, Pete would be surprised if they were, as far as he was aware, highways usually weren't thin roads snaking through mountain passes and forests. Last time he'd checked, they'd been making their way through a desert, nature's impressive rock formations littering the way, the occasional patch of grass and weeds the only sign of life but now... they could be in Washington for all he knew, that was the only place he'd ever seen that bore and resemblance to what he was looking at. And it was beautiful. Truly, it was. Even if the grey walls of solid rock felt just a little too much like a prison for him to be completely comfortable between them.

"Pete! You're awake!" Patrick was beaming at him from the front of the bus, a cap he'd not been wearing before pulled over his hair that Pete suspected was in just as dire a state as his own. Cameron-Caleb was smiling at him, too, though the small crinkle of his mouth didn't come close to matching the full beam painted on Patrick's face. Pete carefully stood up, making sure his leg hadn't nodded off again, and held onto the backs of the seats decorated with sleeping people as he made his way down the bus.

"Want some food?" Pete wasn't sure where his partner in crime had produced the tiny brioche from, but he took it gratefully and tried not to think about it too hard, his growling stomach was protesting against the questionnaire his rational brain was currently putting together.

"We're about an hour away from Aurora, we'll be heading East then, Patrick tells me you're northbound?" Cameron-Caleb asked, as though he hadn't discussed this with Patrick in great detail. Pete nodded. "Yeah, up to Salt Lake City..."

"We'll drop you in Salina then, if that's cool with you? We'd head on down the 70 and you can go... well, wherever it is you're going!" That sounded alright to Pete, mainly because he was confident Patrick had a plan. Patrick always had a plan. More importantly, Patrick now had money and a lot of it. There had to be a way they could get to Canada, there just had to.

"Sure, that'll be fine. Thanks, again." Patrick smiled at Cameron-Caleb warmly and took another bit of his breakfast. Pete settled down on the bench next to him and found some comfort in their proximity.

"So what's the deal with you two then?" Cameron-Caleb asked, an attempt at smalltalking away the remaining minutes, "are you like... together?" Pete absolutely fucking hated the way his stomach flipped.

"No, we're just... colleagues, y'know? Kinda..."  _ Stop there, Pete _ . He hoped that was a good enough answer. He jumped out of his fucking skin when another voice piped up from right behind him. The white girl with the dreads. Always an awful look but he wasn't really here to offer advice on style or explain the concept of cultural appropriation from the point of view of a half black man.

"And what are you gonna do in Salt Lake City? You're from Vegas, right?"

"N-" Pete started, about to give her every damned detail about where they were from and where they were headed for what reason when Patrick suddenly piped up.

"No, we're from San Diego, just... lookin' for something else, yanno? A change. Stuff gets boring if you never switch it up and, well, we're in our 30s, no kids, so..." Pete thanked every deity he could call to mind that Patrick was a quicker thinker than him because, honestly, even if these kids were harmless, which they more than likely were, was it really smart to go telling everybody who they were so whoever the fuck was bound to be on their heels by now could peck along an easy trail of breadcrumbs leading right to them?

"What's your name again?" Pete frowned at Patrick nervously. The tone of her voice wasn't a casual question because she'd forgotten what he was called, it was like she was trying to remember something and Pete hoped and prayed their faces hadn't been plastered all over twitter as two fugitives being hunted down, biggest reward to whoever delivered their heads.

"Patrick." He seemed relaxed and laid back, but Pete noticed the sudden tension in his body, and he hoped that was only because their thighs were touching.

"No, like, your last name."

Shit. Neither of them had ever thought that far ahead. He didn't fucking have a last name, he'd not needed it until right now! Pete's mouth was already hanging open, ready to blurt out a 'Smith' or a 'Jones' or a 'Martinez' because if people thought he was white, they could think Patrick wasn't. But Patrick was faster.

"Stump. Yes, like the tree, I know, make your jokes, I assure you, I've heard them all." Moldy dreadlocks' mouth snapped shut again, the clever comment lost on the tip of her tongue.

"Just asking... like I thought you were my old music teacher at first, I swear, you look just like him."

Pete bit his lip. Hard. Somehow he felt just a little nauseous at the thought of it, he always pushed it aside, the fact that-

"Where're you from?" Patrick shot back a question in return, "I have a big family so maybe..."

"Chicago. Yeah, we just graduated so before we drown ourselves in debt in college we're doing a bit of a road trip because we've never been down here." Patrick nodded along happily as she told her story, obviously feigning interest to distract her from the fact that her dead music teacher was sitting in front of her. Pete spent the rest of the way to Salina freaking out just a little bit.

  
  
  


"You know, you really should let me drive for once maybe we wouldn't get lost then..." Pete ignored Patrick's mumblings, eyes carefully fixed on the road ahead to eliminate the possibility of distraction by his passenger, whose nose was currently buried in a map.

"This is too fucking small, we need something of the area, I can't read shit..."

"You need glasses, is what you need." Patrick had done nothing but complain for the majority of their journey so far and initially, with nothing but $200 and a Walmart gift card lining Pete's pockets, glasses had been out of the question, but now... now that they could stop off at any casino and come out with a plus thanks to Patrick's semi-kosher method of playing Blackjack, well, the sky was the limit. As long as they didn't have to go through any government officials because Pete had definitely already thought of the possibility of just flying to the other end of the globe and had been quickly shot down by Patrick's pointing out of the obvious fact that border control would totally have their photos by now and get them a plane ticket to the nearest jail. Fair trials weren't for enemies of the state. Pete didn't want to ask whether that was Patrick's attempt at a joke or whether he genuinely knew that.

"Okay, so this coming up here is Fountain Green if my shitty eyes aren't completely deceiving me, meaning if we just carry on down here we- CAREFUL!"

Pete tried to swerve, he really did, in fact, he nearly landed them in the ditch beside the road and the ditches here were more gorges than ditches so what he was saying was he swerved so hard to avoid a cat that he'd nearly killed them both. Pete smacked his head against the steering wheel of the ruddy, old Toyota, eyes screwed shut and heart thumping at 100 miles an hour. He knew he'd hit it, there had been a telltale bump as they rolled over the poor thing but, fuck, he was not going to let this get to him! Not this, on top of everybody else!

"You alright?" He asked as he caught a glimpse of Patrick, sitting stiff in the seat next to him, eyes glassy and distant, a million miles away. He shook his head.

"I- we should... maybe we missed it, and-" Oh, how Pete wished he were right this time, too, on top of all the others.

"Patrick, I don't think- Patrick!" Too late. He'd already sprung out of the car like it had been set on fire and was pacing around it to where Pete was certain there would be a cat lying beneath the wheel. He didn't want to go out, he didn't want to see the damage he'd done because that was probably a little kid's pet, but...

Patrick was crouching beside the car when Pete got to him, his body was slumped but his arm was outstretched, his hand gently stroking across the dying animal's head. It was a tabby, small and fluffy and not very old and Pete couldn't bear to look but listening to the soothing words Patrick was speaking was almost worse.

"Shh, here, it's okay. It's gonna be fine, it won't hurt for long." Pete wished he'd killed it outright, this was so much worse. He knew there was no point in trying to save it, he hadn't looked for long, but he'd seen enough to know that... well. He knew a dying animal when he saw one. He was a scientist, after all.

He'd never heard Patrick use that tone for anybody, not for him, not for the people who let them sit in their cars, not even when he was speaking to living cats - something he did quite a lot, annoyingly, it did hold them up. Pete couldn't see his face, couldn't even begin to imagine the expression on it as he repeated the same words and quiet hushing sounds over and over and over again until Pete couldn't hear it anymore for fear he might burst from the guilt welling up in him.

It only took a few minutes until Patrick stood up and took a few steps back so he was standing next to Pete. He sniffed, his nose red and his eyes glassy. Pete was about to offer soothing words when suddenly, Patrick's head dropped against his shoulder. He didn't know what to do as he turned and wrapped his arms around him, Patrick hadn't done this before, Patrick didn't hug people. Patrick wasn't human, after all, something he more than happily reminded Pete of. Frequently. Somehow, a dying tabby cat was enough to change that.

Pete wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close as Patrick sniffed into his last clean shirt. He couldn't tell if he was crying and he wasn't about to ask, he didn't know how Patrick would react, if he was ashamed, if this was him hiding his face in the hug so Pete wouldn't see the tears.

Patrick insisted they buried the cat. Pete wasn't sure that was a good idea, the family it belonged to would be looking for it, they deserved to find it, as far as he was concerned, so they knew what had happened to their pet, but Patrick had insisted, arguing that, this way, it was just another lost cat. Another feline that had gone to live in the woods. They could find comfort in that. Pete didn't point out the sudden burst of empathy Patrick was displaying, didn't want to point out that maybe, just maybe, he was more human that he always claimed to be. Pete kept quiet.

Patrick was silent for the rest of the trip to Salt Lake City, the map was lying in his lap unread as he rested his head against the window and stared out at the night sky. Time wasn't real, Pete decided, as he recalled that just a day ago, he'd been lying in Patrick's lap watching the stars pass by the window of a VW camper bus. The days felt like weeks, had done since they left and Pete was losing track of how long they'd been gone. He wondered if Max and Vicky knew, if they'd figured it out... who was he kidding, of course they had, he was almost certain his belongings had been confiscated by now, the government knew he spent all of his free time watching anime. Fucking browser history. But, again, who was he kidding? They knew that already.

"You okay, buddy?" he asked his companion, who was huddled up in his seat, knees pulled up to his chin. Patrick nodded but didn't say a word. It hurt a bit. Pete hadn't wanted to hit the cat and somehow he felt he was being punished for it. That was hardly fair, was it? He was upset about it, as well, there was no reason for Patrick to be sulking.

"I don't blame you." More than once Pete had already asked himself if Patrick could read minds and more than once he'd come to the conclusion that, yes, he could. It never failed to creep him out though.

"I can't read minds." Pete raised an eyebrow.

"Somehow you saying that makes it even less plausible, buddy." Was that a smile he saw from behind a grey baseball cap?

"I just... I mean I guess what you're thinking. There's only so many logical conclusions, really, it's quite easy. To read people's minds, that is. Not that that's what I do, it’s not… it’s not magic, it’s quantum mechanics, it’s the way the universe works, like, it has to be one thing or the other and I just..."

"You anticipate what they're thinking? You… you take that particle of thought and measure it so it’s forced to become something?" Patrick nodded.

"Exactly. Well… basically… in the way you understand it." Pete smiled to himself. Patrick was alright, really. Had a big of an ego-complex, was a bit high-and-mighty at times and downright creepy at others, but all in all he was... an alright dude.

"That cat really rattled you, huh?" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the question and Pete almost wanted to apologize for asking it. Pete apologized too much. Always had done. He needed to stick up for himself more.

"I dunno, I guess I just... I've seen so many things die, you know? And I've... I've felt people's pain when... when they're dying. It's... It's quite something. No fear a healthy person has comes anywhere close to the fear of somebody who's dying. Dunno. Seeing that cat it just... I've never cared, I guess, because, well, I haven't ever cared about anybody much, really, but somehow that cat felt... y'know, it felt... I mean I could touch it and... and it was there, it was-"

"It was real?" Patrick's silence spoke volumes.

"Maybe you were right", he was getting quieter and quieter, voice barely a breath of wind, "maybe I've... maybe I don't know what it's like. To... to see things and experience things. Maybe I'm not real..."

Pete glanced over at him sporadically, too scared to take his eyes off the road for elongated periods of time.

"Dude, no, you... you are real, I mean, look at you, you're sitting here and talking to me and crying over a dead cat. Either you're real or I'm losing my god damn mind, man! You... I mean, maybe you were born just... I don't know how fucking long ago, Jesus, I've lost track, but it doesn't matter." He took a deep breath, trying to sort out everything in his head. "What I'm saying is... no matter what you were before, if you were... alive or real or whatever. You're alive and real now, dude." Patrick didn't reply. Pete wanted him to, desperately, he was sick and tired of tip-toeing around, but he didn't. After a couple of minutes, he turned so he could snuggle into his seat some more and muttered:

"D'you mind if I catch some sleep?" And, with a sigh, Pete shook his head and hoped he wouldn't need navigating any time soon.

  
  
  


Unlike Vegas, Pete had never been to Salt Lake City before. He'd not really been to this part of the world in general, the towering mountains an unfamiliar backdrop, so unlike the coasts and shores he was used to. Of course, there was - surprise, surprise - a fucking huge lake, however it went unnoticed against the towering monstrosities the Rockies had to offer. Pete almost thought he could stay here as he sat in a Coffee Fellows at 2pm shovelling carrot cake down his gullet. Patrick, meanwhile, remained thoroughly unimpressed.

"We could be in Calgary by tomorrow if we keep going. It's only like 12 hours now..." His nose was buried in the phone he'd just bought himself, desperately insisting that, as an artificial intelligence, he needed it to survive because he was nothing without the internet, it was the only place he knew. Pete, frankly, suspected this was somewhat like arguing with a teenager about how much time they spent staring at a display.

"In theory it should only have taken us 12 hours to get here and we've been on the road for, what, a week?"

"Three days, Pete, literally, stop exaggerating." Pete just shrugged. A week, three days, what was the difference? He'd already come to the conclusion, cooped up in one strange car after the next, that time wasn't real, so who gave a fuck?

"We were hitching, so we were slow, much too slow, I'm amazed they haven't caught up with us to be honest! We shouldn't really be stopping here, there's too many people." Pete frowned at him.

"Isn't that like... good? Like we can disappear in the crowd and w- oh..." His heart slid into his pants when Patrick held up the glaringly bright screen to him.

Wanted. Photos of their faces, or rather, Pete's face and the face of whichever poor bastard Patrick was currently riding around in. A fucking huge reward. This was pretty much his worst nightmare.

"People will know," Patrick continued solemnly, "people will recognize us, somebody is bound to and we need to keep moving as quickly as we can. So finish that off and we can get going again, straight towards the border this time, we're not fucking around, we'll just keep the car."

"Won't they trace it back to us? Dude, it's bound to have GPS tracking on it!" Patrick sighed and nodded, of course, he'd already thought of that. Anything Pete had to say, he'd already thought of, who was he kidding?

"They will and it does but honestly? We just need to be quick now." He was right. Obviously. Annoyingly. Pete nodded in response, he didn't really have anything clever to say. Nothing Patrick hadn't already thought of.

He was just on his way back from the bathroom when it happened. Honestly, Pete would never have noticed, he was paying too much attention to himself and his own wellbeing to be giving much of a toss about his surroundings. Having said that, nobody else noticed, either, the four occupied tables were all equally as oblivious as him so, really, he could hardly blame himself for not noticing, could he?

Patrick did notice, though. Patrick, the sole person in the room who could be forgiven for not picking up on it, the silent cues, the unspoken cries for help. He wasn't human, after all. But Patrick did pick up on them.

"What's up?" Pete asked as he sat back down at their table because what he did notice was the sudden change in body language. Patrick was stiff, rigid, alert, gaze fixed on something behind Pete. "Dude? You alright?" Patrick shook his head so quickly he barely caught it and then, without warning, got up and walked up to the bar. Pete watched carefully as he leaned over and whispered something to one of the girls making a coffee, apron tied loosely around her waist, the bow at the back half undone. Pete couldn't hear what was being said, but he saw the sudden shock that contorted her face for no longer than a split second and the brief nod she gave Patrick, who smiled at her before pacing back towards Pete.

"Dude, what was that all about?" He wanted to know, felt he had a right to know, this dude was getting him in deep enough shit as it was and if it was about to get any deeper, he'd fucking drown in it, he needed to know if something was about to go horribly wrong!

"Later." Patrick dismissed him almost without a second thought and carefully watched as the girl took off her apron, draping it over the side of the bar, and made her way to the Ladies restroom. Pete frowned.

"What on earth-"

"Later!" It was more of a hiss now, desperation mingled with annoyance. He could have sworn Patrick didn't so much as blink as his eyes stayed fixed on the wooden door with the telltale silhouette on it. There was a man standing next to it, leaning against the wall, his legs crossed, heavy boots on his feet and a cap pulled low over his eyes. Something about him made Pete feel uneasy.

The girl came out after what couldn't have been more than a minute or two and walked straight back behind the bar. Pete watched her closely as she rinsed the cups, seemingly normal, nothing out of the ordinary, just another day at work, if it weren't for the way her hands were trembling.

"Fuck, I thought so..." Patrick began cussing under his breath, his bottom lip was being violated by his teeth nervously digging into it.

"What's going on?" Instead of replying like a normal person, Patrick turned back to his phone. He began typing away like a maniac, not even showing any sort of intention to ever shed some light on the situation so Pete's tiny mind might begin to understand what was going through the ingenious Patrick's head. He was about to start complaining, throw a tantrum, maybe, if that was what it took to get him the attention he wanted. Just that second, his phone pinged at him from inside his pocket. New SIM card, obviously, he had thought that far ahead, leaving the last one in the back of a pickup to be brought as far away as possible. Patrick had told him that was pointless seeing as it deactivated the second he took it out and Pete knew that, but hell, he'd bet an arm there was some way of tracking the damned thing.

_ I recognize the girl that went into the bathroom. She's still in there. Went missing about a week ago. Taken from Portland. Being sold to whoever wants her. Last offer I saw $8000. Might be higher now, that's not a lot. _

Pete stared at the words in front of him. He read them again and again and again, seven or eight times before he looked up at Patrick, or rather, his ice blue eyes that were staring holes into him.

"How do you-"

"The internet, man. There's a lot of stuff on there. Did you know a human can survive four to five days without a liver if their blood vessels are re-connected? It's wild." Pete felt sick just thinking about how Patrick had found this out.

"So you recognized the girl?" Patrick nodded. "From... a missing persons notice?"

"Yes. That and the site she's being sold on. I think Cathy is calling the cops as we speak so we should probably get out of here..."

"Cathy?" Patrick vaguely gestured towards the girl behind the bar who looked very, very shaken, to say the least. Pete hoped the guy wouldn't notice. He figured Patrick was right, though, if the police were on their way, they needed to get out and get out quickly. He left a hefty tip for Cathy and grabbed his duffel bag before following Patrick outside. It was cold in this bit of the world. Granted, not nearly as cold as Chicago in the winter, but a lot colder than LA. Mountains, Pete decided, were a bitch.

Patrick crossed the street but rather than getting as far away as he could as quickly as possible, he slumped down on a bench beside a bin as though he didn't have a care in the world.

"Dude!" Pete hissed, "You just said we need to get out of here!" Patrick remained silent, arm casually swung over the back of the wooden bench. Pete was faintly aware of a car pulling up a few houses down and two men getting out. They were dressed casually, suits that were smart but not too smart, like they'd just come from the office and were on their lunch break. Patrick watched them carefully as the crossed the road, headed straight for the café they'd just waked out of themselves.

"Cops?" He nodded. Of course, he was waiting to see if she'd be alright. He was still tense, hadn't relaxed one bit since Pete had come out of the bathroom. A bead of sweat was clinging to his temple and the hair poking out from beneath the grey cap was damp and for the second time that day, Pete wondered if Patrick was more human than he wanted to admit.

"We can't stay," he explained, trying to be as soothing and gentle as he could because he understood. Fuck, he wanted this to go well, he needed this to go well. The part of his brain that wasn't terrified for his own skin was telling his body to go back in there and fucking fight. He couldn't begin to make sense of it. Maybe that was why he wasn't struggling to keep calm and rational where Patrick was so close to losing his cool. He couldn't wrap his head around it. This didn't happen to real people! These were just news stories and crime novels and Pete couldn't understand what was happening.

Patrick could. He didn't for a second doubt Patrick knew exactly what would happen to her.

But they had to go.

"She will be alright," Pete tried to reassure him. More cops were beginning to pull in, actual police cars now lining the streets and Pete was all but waiting for the western standoff to begin. "Dude, these guys know what they're doing, come on, we need to go." Patrick didn't budge.

"You've done what you can. You're no use to anybody in jail. Or dead. Whichever would be worse. I don't fancy dying today, Patrick." His jaw was grinding furiously, the anger in it matching his balled fist resting in his lap, ready to smash the next best jaw and Pete suspected that might be his.

"It'll be on the internet or something, she'll be fine! What're you gonna do?"

"I know how to fight, Pete, I could have fucking taken him down there and then!"

"Then why didn't you?" Patrick didn't reply. He couldn't reply. There was no need for him to, Pete knew why. "Because you're like five foot tall, Patrick. You're a little fat guy with bad hair and breathing problems you should probably get checked out. You may be like the world's most fucking intelligent supercomputer but you're not strong, you didn't exactly pick a body builder! You're scared! You're instinctively scared, same as Cathy, same as me, fuck, because I was terrified when you told me! You can't help her and we need to go!" Patrick blinked up at him, tears welling in his eyes, whether they were rage or fear, Pete couldn't tell but he braced himself for that fist to smack into his ribs.

To his utter surprise, Patrick's body slumped. Pete watched him flex his fingers, watched him squeeze his eyes shut and take deep, counted breaths. "Yeah, you... you're right, I..." he cast his gaze to the ground, refusing to meet Pete's eyes. "I'm just... I'm a coward. And weak. Not like... like I can..." Pete never found out what he could, it was cut off with a bitter laugh. He wanted to play therapist, sit Patrick down and talk him through it, insist he wasn't a weak coward and he'd already done so much more than anybody else would have,  _ could  _ have. There was no time.

Their car was parked a few blocks down, a ticket trapped under the windscreen wipers. Pete carelessly tossed it in the bin. He hesitated, fingers brushing the handle of the driver's door.

"D'you wanna drive?" He offered. There was no harm in it, really. How wrong could it go? He was certain Patrick remembered the highway code better than he did.

But Patrick shook his head, climbed in on his side of the Toyota and buried himself behind the map he didn't need anymore. 


	4. Chapter 4

"Not gonna lie, this feels like a fucking betrayal. We've been in Montana for like three hours and I still haven't seen a single moose, I thought this was, like, moose central! I thought they'd be fuckin' everywhere man, we'd just be driving over a street made of moose!" Pete smiled to himself as Patrick ranted on about his apparent disappointment in the lack of moose.

"We're only like... three more hours away from the border, dude. There's moose in Canada if I've not been fed lies my entire life." Pete wasn't sure what he'd expected in Montana. A lot of fields. Some racist farmers. The odd moose. A kid leading a double-life as a blonde pop star. He'd not really considered the fact that it might be, well, downright beautiful. They were out of the grey prison walls now, pottering along the foot of the Rocky Mountains (a name Pete still found incredibly inspired), past lakes and rivers and glorious views. Helena, according to Patrick, was a pretty city that felt more like a town, really, mountains as a backdrop, a lake nearby... not unlike Salt Lake, he assumed, just... cozier.

"Listen, if you google image search Montana, half the pictures are fucking moose, I wanna see a moose in Montana and I won't leave before that happens!" Pete rolled his eyes.

"You just sound like a stroppy child."

"Yeah well technically I'm only a few days old so sue me!"

"Your body is like 35 and your mind is at least a couple of weeks old, stop being such a diva!"

"I'm not a diva! I am but a child, Peter, I can be as stroppy as I want! And I wanna see some moose!"

"I thought you have seen them! You've seen it all, remember?"

"Yeah, but I wanna get a feel for the size, you know. It's hard to picture how big they are when you have nothing nearby to relate them to!" Pete chuckled to himself.

"Don't laugh at me, man! I mean it, don't fuckin' laugh at me!"

"You're adorable when you're angry, you get all midwestern, did you know that?" Patrick stuck his tongue out.

"Apparently I'm from Chicago so no surprises there!" yeah. The music teacher from Chicago. Pete still hoped the girl had been wrong about that. He didn't know why, but it creeped him out. He probably should be creeped out anyway, but when he looked at Patrick, all he could see was his friend. It was fine until somebody pointed out that, well... that wasn't Patrick. Not completely.

"Did you know that's where I'm from, too?"

"Yep." Of course he did, why had Pete even asked?

"What don't you know?" Patrick frowned at him and pulled his knees up to his chin. Pete really wished he'd stop doing that, if he crashed the car, Patrick would knock his fucking teeth out.

"Not a lot, I presume. I don't really know. Try knowing what you don't know, man, it's-"

"I mean, there's a lot I don't know. I don't know how a rocket works or how to speak German or, like, what the scientific name of a black rhino is or... or like, how to cure HIV and Cancer and all that or why we fall in love or... or why I can't find somewhere to call home or what that feeling is when I'm by the ocean o-"

"Oh, I don't know that!" Pete looked over at Patrick in surprise. "I don't know what it feels like to look at the ocean. I mean, I always just guessed it was like whatever but if you say it's like... a feeling, then..."

"You've never been to the ocean?" Patrick gave him a look like he was the biggest fucking idiot in a 70-mile radius, which, to be honest, was probably fair.

"Pete, you've been with me almost every second of my life, save that bit where I won us a load of money and toilet breaks. When have I ever seen the ocean?" He was right. They'd gone from the lab straight to his house and from his house straight to Nevada. They'd never once stopped by the coast. Patrick had never seen the sea. And without giving it much thought, Pete flicked the indicator to leave the highway.

"No, we need to stay on route 15, Pete, get back into the lane you were on!" Patrick insisted, immediately turning back to studying the map he still could barely read.

"We're taking a detour", Pete was beginning to question his own sanity, "you've never seen the ocean. We need to change that. I'm taking you to see the sea, dear, and I won't hear any arguments about it!" Patrick remained quiet as they turned onto the westbound road. He knew this was dumb and he knew they were hours away from Canada, but... Something inside him told him this was the right thing to do. Instinct, that was what it was. He trusted his instinct. He did back in LA, he should have just turned P off, mercilessly turned that last key but...

He hadn't been wrong then. He wasn't wrong now.

"You're a good dude, you know", Pete wasn't sure where the words were coming from, "a bit odd but... you're a good dude." Patrick was staring down at his hands, mouth moving like a fish on land, like the words he couldn't find was the air he needed to breathe.

"Thank you", he said eventually, "thanks, I... you're not... I mean, you're a good person. I'm... glad you didn't deactivate me." Pete's stomach did that stupidly annoying flip thing again. But this time, for the first time, he didn't feel bad about it.

  
  
  
  


"Now this, this is Montana!" Pete didn't miss the way Patrick frowned at him from where he'd just climbed out of the passenger seat, "nothing but hills and fields and endless fuckin' nothing! Where are we?" Patrick was squinting into the distance, evening sunlight bleeding into his eyes. Okay, they really needed to make the glasses a priority, Pete wasn't sure how much longer he could force Patrick to be hunched over a map of the northern States before it became an actual hazard to the guy's health.

"Just outside Missoula, maybe we can get like... a bite to eat there or something? Maybe stop off for the night?" Pete put down his phone, giving up on the photo he was trying to take. Patrick looked deadly serious.

"Dude, you know we need to keep going, yeah? Like we have the government on our ass. Probably. They're doing an exceedingly awful job, to be honest with you." Patrick smiled, the sort of smile you give to people who are painfully bad at being funny in any way whatsoever. A pitiful smile, that was what it was. He sauntered over to Pete and glanced at his phone screen that was currently showing off a rather out-of-focus picture of the Montana Mountains. Hills. Whatever. Pete's skin was hot where his fingertips brushed against it to pry the phone out of his hands and he could barely ignore the way his own reached out as Patrick's hand pulled away. He stopped himself.

"I don't understand why people never adjust the brightness when they take pictures on their phones," Patrick muttered, more to himself than to Pete, really, as he dragged down the little sun on the display. Of course his photos were better, Pete didn't even have to look to know that much. Patrick was better than him in everything he did. It was barely any wonder, Pete had made him that way, after all, magnificent, talented, creative, innovative. Perfect. This was everything he'd hoped and wished for. He should be proud of himself, no matter how much P evolved and learned and no matter how much better he would become, he would be nothing without Pete.

Except he was beautiful. The way his eyes glowed golden in the sunset and his hair turned a shade of fire as the low light caught in it, burning copper against pale, milky skin, smooth, perfect, almost flawless were it not for the barely-there freckles spotting the bridge under his nose and the crinkles beneath his eyes. He was beautiful. And that had not been Pete's doing.

It was obvious Patrick knew the second he turned his head that fraction that meant he could meet Pete's eye. It was obvious there was no point in arguing or hiding it or denying it. Pete wasn't going to deny the way his heart skipped a beat when those golden eyes darted down to his lips, just for a second, barely enough for him to notice it, but he did and he let his own settle on that thick, flush curve of Patrick's lower lip because what was the point in hiding it? He knew. Pete suspected he'd known for a while. Maybe longer than he had.

"I know you want me..." It shouldn't be so hot, it was just a simple statement, not even delivered in a low voice from between his legs or a hushed whisper by his ear, but Pete could almost feel his blood re-routing. It took him quite some effort to reply.

"Do you want me?" If Patrick were a normal guy, there would be no question. If Patrick were a normal guy, there would only be one reason why he was staring at Pete's body that way, why his lips were slightly parted, why his pupils were blown and his eyes were burning. If Patrick were a normal guy, Pete wouldn't have to ask, he'd know to take him apart piece by gorgeous piece. Patrick wasn't a normal guy. Pete didn't understand the signals, or rather, he didn't know whether he would misunderstand signals. So he asked. So he stood and waited as Patrick mentally undressed him, as he scanned over Pete again and again like that would answer anything.

Their lips connected before Patrick could even finish his nod. Fire raged inside of Pete as he fed off the heat Patrick was giving him, his mouth hot, wet, willing, skin soft beneath Pete's palms as pale fingers tangled in dark hair and tugged, hungrily, greedily, desperately for more, more more, like Pete could give him everything he needed, every breath, every heartbeat, every feeling he needed to be human. He nipped at that fucking lower lip, the one that had been taunting him since the second he'd laid eyes on it, screaming kiss me, bite me, feel me and fuck, Pete kissed and bit it until he was certain it was red and raw between his teeth.

Patrick devoured him, tongue all but shoved down Pete's throat at the first opportunity he got as he tugged and pulled relentlessly, as though they could get any closer if they... if...

Pete nuzzled at Patrick's throat, the hint of a beard growing where he'd been clean shaven merely the day before. He licked along the coarse skin, red-hot, burning, beautiful. Patrick's body tensed as his tongue skimmed past his jaw bone and Pete chuckled against his throat, making him shiver. Good god, he loved finding those secret places that made people involuntarily squirm. He was dragged away by a fist in his hair and met with hunger in deep blue. Patrick's mouth was hanging open, spit-slicked and his lips, as expected, crimson red.

Pete knew what he wanted. He was only human, after all.

"Get in the car", he whispered in Patrick's ear, close enough for his hot breath to make fine hairs stand on end. He watched as Patrick chewed his lip, as he climbed on the back seat clumsily, his hands scrabbling, his ass on display but hidden beneath baggy jeans. Pete wanted him out of them. He wasted no time, climbing after him, pinning Patrick between his hands. It was too cramped, too tight and small for two grown men, no matter how short they may be, and Pete was definitely too old to be fucking somebody in the back seat of a hire car, but Patrick was hot, his dick was hard and as far as he knew, he could be murdered by the United States of America tomorrow.

He tried not to think too hard about the fact that Patrick was a virgin as he unbuttoned the ill-fitting shirt, tried not to let it get to him that he was the first, the very first, as he unbuckled the belt that was definitely needed to keep the jeans on Patrick's hips. The look on his face didn't give him away, it wasn't nervous or excited, not the way it was when Pete had lost it or taken it from others, he looked determined and calm, like he knew what he was doing, like he'd done this a thousand times before. Pete was beginning to wonder if, maybe, he had.

Greedy hands grabbed at his shirt and tugged it over his head. Pete sat back and let it drop on the floor, flexing the few abs he'd managed to curate, the tattoos around his neck and on his belly on show. He knew he was pretty, he fucking knew it, the never-ending string of one-night stands and ability to pick up almost anybody he wanted evidence of that. Patrick's eyes were wild as his hands settled on Pete's hips, thumbs digging into golden skin. Pete teased open the fly of his jeans to reveal soft cotton boxer-briefs beneath, telltale bulge pulling them even tighter than they would usually be. He let his thumb brush against it and reveled in the way Patrick's breath hitched. Pete skimmed his fingertips over pretty pink nipples, already hard, maybe from the cold, maybe from Pete, copper hair scratching his skin. 

"Is that good?" Patrick nodded, kept his eyes determined and fixed on Pete as his fingers hooked into the waistband of Pete's sweatpants and tugged at them. Pete smirked when Patrick realized he wasn't wearing any underwear.

"That's... kind of gross, you know..." Patrick stuttered around his too-heavy tongue.

"As if you care", he shot back, tweaking the nipple he was rolling between his fingers, making Patrick arch his back and contort his face into something between pain and pleasure. Oh, how closely they were linked.

"Let me suck your cock?" Pete's dick twitched at the question. Fuck, how he wanted those pretty, pink lips wrapped around him, sucking him senseless, milking every last drop from him. He didn't reply, just shuffled up Patrick's body until he was straddling his chest, his dick nudging against his chin. Patrick's gaze was desperate and thirsty as Pete placed a hand on the back of his head and guided him towards where he wanted to be until hot breath hit the tip of his throbbing cock. It was about then that he lost all his sense.

"Fucking do it", he snarled through gritted teeth and Patrick smirked up at him, devilish glint still in his eyes as he pursed his lips and placed a gentle kiss right on the tip. The mere contact was enough to drive Pete crazy. He began to suck at the head lazily, sloppily, but deliberately so, like he'd done this a million times and this was just muscle memory working Pete over. But, oh god, was he good. He didn't resist as Pete pushed forward, inching his dick into his mouth until he felt Patrick's throat close up around him, hot and slick and so, so, so fucking good.

"You look fucking amazing", he breathed past a constricted moan. He did. He fucking did, Pete had never seen anybody look quite so pretty with a mouth full of cock.

His leg was cramping from the awkward angle he had to hold it at so he wouldn't fall off the seat, his head was spinning from the lack of air in the vehicle, his arm hurt from holding himself up for so long, but Patrick hadn't slowed once, alternating between sucking Pete down, all the way down, as far as he would go, until he was gagging around him, and licking along his shaft, lapping at it like he needed it. If Pete said this was the best blowjob he'd ever received, he'd be lying but, by god, it was definitely top 5.

"Can I fuck you?" He wanted to, he wanted to get Patrick out of those fucking jeans, spread his legs and lick him open, watch himself sink into him, fuck him raw until he was begging and screaming, nothing but Pete's name on his lips. The disappointment almost crushed him when Patrick shook his head and pulled off, sucking at the tip and flicking his tongue over Pete's slit one last time, making him squirm and let out a pathetic mewl.

"Where's that Vaseline you use way too much of?" Pete frowned down at him, erection raging hot between his legs and desperate, so fucking desperate, for relief.

"Pete? Come on, dude, where's the damn Vaseline?"

"In... in... uh... glove compartment?" He hoped. It had to be there, right?

"Are you gonna get it?" Pete nodded dumbly and scrambled over the central console as elegantly as he could (which was not very considering he still had his sweatpants around his knees) and hastily undid the glove box, grabbing the little tub neatly sat right in front of him. When he turned back around, Patrick was sitting up, trousers pooling by his ankles as he slowly stroked himself and fuck,  _ fuck _ , the dude was hung like a fucking horse.

"Come here, Pete", the low tone of voice shot through Pete like hot alcohol, coursing through his bloodstream and driving him crazy. He was barely in control of his own body as he climbed over where Patrick wanted him - on his lap, straddling his hips, knees either side of him. He let himself rock down, guided by Patrick’s hands on his waist, their dicks rubbing against each other, too dry, too much friction, almost painful. He felt a hand slip down until it was resting on his ass, gently kneading it before cold fingers slipped between his cheeks and brushed over his hole. Pete bit his lip, his breathing heavy as Patrick teased over it, finger already coated in makeshift lube. 

Pete rocked down, chasing his touch, his dick aching between his legs, his ass hungry for the friction of Patrick’s fingers opening him up. He whined pleadingly as Patrick pulled his hand back, a scolding expression on his face and, fuck, he shouldn’t be able to do these things. Annoyed, determined, Pete pushed back some more, chasing friction, desperate to get on Patrick’s cock. He leaned down, hands braced on his chest as he pressed their foreheads together, lips inches apart so they shared hot breaths. He smirked to himself as he felt Patrick tense up beneath him, he let one of his hands go back to toying with a pretty, pink nipple, and Patrick gave up whatever game he’d been trying to play. 

Pete sighed in satisfaction as he slid down onto Patrick’s finger, the burn of it concealed by the relief flooding him. He began rocking down on it, back and forth at his own pace, getting used to the feel and stretch of something he hadn’t been familiar with for a long, long time. He nodded to Patrick, hoping it was enough of a signal, hoping he would understand. He did. Pete hid his moan behind a kiss as a second finger slipped in, opening him up more, more, more, the promise of what was to come making Pete’s gut bubble with excitement. He didn’t give a signal for the third, Patrick added it of his own accord, pushing into Pete, suddenly moving his own wrist. Pete stilled, hovering above him, as Patrick began moving his fingers in and out and in and out, picking up pace, carefully flexing them, curling them, faster, faster, faster. Pete’s mouth dropped open, panting hot, heavy breaths against white skin as he let Patrick prep him, loosen him up, make him ready for his cock. He had no struggle finding that sweet spot, making sure to brush over it once in a while just to make Pete clench a little before pulling out again. He could already feel his brain clouding over, dick angry and leaking between them.

“Stop, stop, I’m…” he breathed heavily, suddenly left gaping and empty as Patrick removed his hand. Pete felt almost empty at the loss of his fingers, his ass suddenly painfully exposed to the cold air. He mindlessly followed as Patrick guided him into an awkward lying position, half his body hanging of the bench as he grappled for a way to steady himself.

Before he could, however, he was met with the head of Patrick’s cock, nudging against Pete, already slick and wet, ready to fill him up again, drive out that emptiness. Pete choked on his own breath as he pushed in, first sending a dull pain through him, so much so that Pete wasn’t sure if he really was ready. But then he bottomed out, his hips pressed up to Pete’s, his hands steadily holding onto Pete’s hips, his lips inches away from Pete’s own and he felt, rather than saw, the sweat already pearling on Patrick’s brow. 

They breathed heavily, like they’d just finished rather than just begun, the car filled with sticky, hot air as they emptied their lungs more than they filled them. Pete adjusted himself on the bench, shuffling a little to the side, making Patrick suck in a hard breath as he moved around him. It was almost an alien feeling, it had been too long, way too long, since Pete had done this. 

“You gotta move, dude…” he murmured after a while, the discomfort gradually settling in. Patrick muttered something against his chest, a string of incoherent blabberings and suddenly Pete realized, again, that, oh… this was new to him. 

“Uh…” he tried to find the right words, tried to dig out the correct vocabulary he needed to explain how sex worked to a… to a computer, suddenly regretting not having the birds and bees talk approximately ten minutes earlier to save them both the humiliation of-

“FUCK!” the thought was lost, along with Pete’s senses as, all of a sudden and with no warning, Patrick pulled out and abruptly slammed all the way into him again, hitting that sweet spot like he was magnetized to it. Pete, startled, grabbed at his back, trying to get a grip on Patrick, who began setting a frankly brutal pace, right out of the gate. Pete dug his nails into his soft, padded back and revelled in the sound of naked skin slapping against naked skin, that sound you never, ever want to hear because it might just be up there on the top ten list of gross shit you can pick up through thin walls. 

Unless you’re getting dicked down in the back of a rental car in the middle of fucking nowhere on the run from the CIA. 

Patrick was rolling his hips rather than thrusting them, grip on Pete’s waist firm, holding him in place and all he could do was wrap his legs around Patrick in response to the feeling of his cock hitting against his prostate again and again and again. Patrick’s dick, it turned out, was not only long, but beautifully thick, and with every move, Pete could feel it against every inch of him, every cell in his body roaring with it as Patrick leaned over him, face pressed into his neck, panting into Petes ear.

“ _ Fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah, fuck, you feel so fucking good, baby. You’re so fucking good for me. _ ” All Pete could do was whine, the praise echoing around his head where it translated into pleasure and coursed through his entire system until his cock felt like it was on fire, rock hard between their bodies with Patrick’s belly rubbing against it, spreading the sticky precome over the both of them. 

Patrick groaned, low and loud, making Pete shiver and tense up around him, his toes curling, his fingernails digging deeper into Patrick’s back. He felt soft, full lips press against his, eagerly took them in, biting down on the plush-plump lower lip of the man above to conceal a pathetically needy moan as Patrick’s fingertips ghosted over his stomach. He smirked, Pete felt it against his mouth, and his voice dropped to a tone that had Pete all but begging,  _ begging _ .

“You’re so desperate”, he breathed against hot, golden skin, “so desperate, so desperate for me you slut.” Something in Pete stirred, something he knew shouldn’t, he wanted to protest, consciously, or rather, the fragment of rationality he still had, wanted to tell Patrick to cut it out, but, oh god, if his basic animal instinct didn’t betray him in that second. Patrick laughed, low and predatory, as Pete moaned at his words. He didn’t say anything else, just started licking over Pete’s mouth, into it, over it. And suddenly, impossibly, he picked up even more speed, hitched Pete’s legs over his waist as he leaned back so he was on his knees, Pete splayed out before him, his hips working frantically, sweat dripping off his brow as his teeth sunk into his bottom lip,  _ that fucking bottom lip.  _

“Touch yourself,” he commanded, voice shockingly steady, almost as though it was separate from his panting, sweating, burning body. Pete did as he was told. 

It didn’t take more than a few sloppy, quick strokes until he exploded, his orgasm tearing through him in shockwaves until his vision turned white. He couldn’t help but cry out, his back arching up off the seat, his legs cramped, pulled Patrick closer, closer,  _ closer _ . 

It took him some time to come back down, his breathing deep, heavy, making his chest visibly rise and fall as it pumped in time with his heart beating inside of it. His own come was wet on his belly, trickling down the side of it, onto the cheap seats that had chafed his back. 

The next thing he noticed was the way Patrick was stroking his sides, a dopey, kind smile on his face, such a stark contrast to the animalistic, open-mouthed howl he recalled seeing mere seconds ago. 

Pete’s heart didn’t skip a beat at the sight of Patrick, it completely forgot it had a purpose to serve at all. 

“You okay?” His voice was hoarse, drowsy, beautiful and Pete nodded sleepily. 

Patrick rolled his eyes when Pete made grabby hands for him, but a small smile was firmly cemented on his face, his beautiful, beautiful mouth curving upwards ever so slightly, making it obvious that he had no control over it, he had no control over his emotions. Like… like…

Like a human. 

Pete wrapped himself around him, his face buried in the crook of Patrick’s neck and he took in his scent with a deep breath, letting it overwhelm him, cloud his brain and all his senses once again and splitting him away from reality. He could stay here. Maybe, if they stayed here, nobody would find them. He could do that. He could live like this. Forever if he had to, a very long time for now.

He turned his face ever so slightly, just to free his mouth enough so Patrick could hear the question burning on his lips.

“Where… where the fuck did you learn  _ that _ ?”  _ That _ being quite possibly, without wanting to sound dramatic, the best fucking sex Pete Wentz had ever had in his goddamn life. All Patrick did was shrug, like it was nothing to him, like he’d done it a million, billion times before, like this was normal to him.

“Porn.”


	5. Chapter 5

They drove on through the night, surrounded by shielding blackness and glaring headlights, blending in to the scenery of roaming travellers and homecomers and seeming almost normal amongst them all. At some point, their hands found each other, fingers brushing in the dim light, Patrick’s hot, sweaty palm against Pete’s dry skin. Too much vaseline. As if there was any such thing. 

He’d suggested stopping off until morning, but Patrick had dismissed the suggestion with a shake of his head, no need for an explanation, and Pete found himself wondering, not for the first time, but more seriously now than ever, if they would really see America from the outside. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Pete asked because he had no possible way of knowing. Would he even understand if he told him? Would he? Could he ever comprehend what went on in Patrick’s mind, behind those sea blue eyes? As it turned out, he did. He understood perfectly, the sentiment behind his answer so real, so tangible, so  _ human _ . 

“You.” Pete’s heart, his dumb, stupid little heart, fluttered hopelessly in its skeletal cage and he wasn’t entirely certain the sweat on his palm wasn’t his own anymore. He didn’t know how to use the words he had to communicate what he was feeling, the thoughts and questions flying around his measly little brain, if he could even make Patrick comprehend, begin to comprehend, at least, what he wanted to say.Because, underneath it all, underneath the soft skin, the hot flesh, the beating heart and breathing lungs, there was still one question. One huge, massive, important question.

“I don’t…” Patrick sighed heavily, letting his head drop against the window beside him, staring out at the night, watching raindrops chase each other down the glass, “I can’t think about anything else, it’s like… anything I see or feel, anything else that I… I try to think about, it always ties back to you.” Just for a second, Pete’s eyes left the red tail lights of the car ahead to rest instead on the figure hunched against the door of the little rental, shoulders pulled up to his ears, his free arm wrapped around himself, knees pressed against his chest in what looked like frankly the most uncomfortable position Pete could possibly imagine. He almost looked like he was in pain. Pete knew the feeling, he knew it all too well.

Focus back on the road ahead, he tried his best to sort his array of thoughts into something tangible, something real he could explain in simple words that were way beyond him. 

“Y’know… sometimes… sometimes, we meet somebody. And they’re like… like there’s just something about them… like they’re glowing, almost, they’re this… this incredible…” he paused for a deep breath, his head getting ahead of his tongue, incapable of translating emotion into text, like he’d forgotten to add a closing tag to the end of his script. He fumbled through a thousand mental compartments until he was satisfied he’d found what he needed to start a second attempt. 

“What I’m trying to say is… some people are more important to us than the whole world could ever be.” He wasn’t sure whether it was an explanation or a confession.

And out of all the possible reactions and responses, the most likely of which, in Pete’s mind, was silence, Patrick gave the one he hadn’t considered.

“I know what love is.” Love. There is was. “It’s a balance of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin. A… complex mixture of neurochemicals that form a bond to another individual and encourage the mating process. It’s so vastly complex and incomprehensible because it is essential to a species’ prolonged survival. It’s very simple really…” 

Oh, how easy it was to crush somebody. All it took was a few clever words, a few clever words from a pretty mouth Pete craved nothing but unfiltered emotion, raw, real emotion, from to replace the endorphin with  monoamines, norepinephrine, cortisol. Crazy how the three happiest chemicals were also three of the saddest, if only paired with the wrong partners. Not everybody has had their heart broken. And if you haven’t, you don’t know that sinking feeling a single revelation, a single look, a single word or sentence can deal you with a single, murderous blow, snuffing out those dreams, those silly, little dream you’d told yourself not to believe but somehow still did. 

What could he say? He was only human.

He wasn’t even aware he’d let go of Patrick’s hand until he felt cold fingers ghosting over it, asking to be let back in. Hesitantly, Pete opened his fist, let Patrick creep between his fingers and nestle there and Pete didn’t know whether it was healing him or taking him apart. 

“Don’t force it, Patrick…” he mumbled, more to himself than to the man next to him. 

“No, Pete, let me finish…” he fell over his words, like he couldn’t keep up with them or like they couldn’t keep up with him, either way, it made Pete take his eyes off the black road once more. Patrick had turned in his seat, sideways now, facing him, both hands holding his, thumbs stroking over the back of it as he stared depths into Pete. 

“Love is a complex cocktail of chemicals essential for a species’ prolonged survival and simple, really. Except… except I’m not sure I understand it… anymore. It… it makes so much sense, I mean, logically, it’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward, right? Always wondered what the fuss was, why… why people wasted so much time with it, but… like, I… I think I… because suddenly, every song is about you.”

Pete might have crashed the car and killed them both right that instance had his goldfish impression not been interrupted by an angry blow of a car horn. He did what he could to gather himself, gripped the steering wheel with both hands until his knuckles went white, leaving Patrick grasping for him and he found himself torn between his car and the man he…

“I love you.” In the end, he chose his mouth, slapping his palm over it as if her could hold in the words that had already escaped him, collect them up from where they were floating in the space between them and take them back. “I’m sorry, I… it’s fine, ignore me, I’m just being dumb, I don’t know why I said that, I’m not even-”   
  


“Pete shut up.” He fell silent in an instant, feeling the shame burn through him, burn through his entire body and eat him up and, fuck, he could never look Patrick in the face again. That was the only thought going through his head as he prepared for the second heartbreak that night, mentally building himself up for the fal because, yes, he was being stupid, he’d not even known Patrick a week, a  _ week _ , he wasn’t even a proper person and here Pete was, imagining a picket fence, a dog and a couple of kids with a fucking computer. 

“I think I love you.” 

“Wh-what? I mean.. What?”   
  
“I said I think I love you, Pete… I mean, I’m not… sure, I can’t be sure that’s the case but, well, I mean, it only makes sense and… and like, Mariah Carey was really onto something, you know?”

Pete didn’t have a list of the weirdest shit that had come from Patrick’s mouth, but had he had one, that might just have made the top spot. “I’m sorry, what?” Patrick blushed enough for him to be able to catch it in the dim light and out of the corner of his eye. He awkwardly picked at his nails, obviously realising he’s said something amusing, stupid, inappropriate. Pete saw him shrug it off. “Y’know… I can’t live if living is without you… isn’t… isn’t that, like-” 

He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as Patrick fumbled around trying to explain his oddly phrased display of affection.

“Patrick, that was both the dumbest and the cutest thing I’ve ever heard anybody say. Like, ever.” He bowed his head, looking anywhere but Pete, muttering something that sounded like an apology, and Pete put a hand to his head and stroked his thinning hair, smiling as his thumb traced the hint of sideburns on his cheeks. 

“This has been… quite a journey.” Patrick remarked, leaning into the touch. Pete felt inclined to agree.

“Gotta admit, wouldn’t have been as much fun heading to Mexico”, he chuckled. 

“‘N too hot…” Pete frowned at him and Patrick shrugged, an apologetic look on his face, “I wanted to be somewhere cold, y’know… so my hardware didn’t overheat…”

“You’re fucking kidding me?” Pete stared at him in disbelief, not sure whether to laugh or cry at the revelation. “You’re telling me you took us the wrong way round because of your computer-brain? You’re a fucking meme, dude!” 

“Hey, I’m… not a meme, I’m… look, we’re only 10 miles outside of seattle anyway, it’s fine, we’re fine, it doesn’t matter!” He couldn’t deny, Patrick’s embarrassment was cuter than was probably legal.

Patrick fell very silent very suddenly. Not a comfortable silence, either, the sort that held the threat of unspoken words that didn’t want to be heard, Pete could almost feel Patrick’s brain trying to piece together a sentence he couldn’t work out how to say as the light , careless atmosphere that had settled between them was sucked out of the car bit by bit. 

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.” Pete frowned at the road.

“You’ve not dragged me into anything, I made you, this is my shit as much as it is yours.” That was his truth. He could blame Patrick for the details, like sending them north rather than south, like not reminding him of security cameras when he stole him, but all in all? This was his mess. He stood by it. 

“No, you… don’t understand, Pete. You can’t possibly understand because this is so much bigger than you. They won’t let you go, they just won’t.” Patrick was refusing to look in his direction and it was slowly making him mad.

“Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Of course they wouldn’t let me go, but they won’t catch us in the first place! We’ll make it, dude.” He wasn’t sure how convinced of that he was himself, but they stood a chance, still. Until they were stuffed into the back of a black van, they stood a chance and Pete would hang onto that with everything he had. Anxiety flooded his body as Patrick shook his head. 

“We’ll get to Canada, then what? They’ll never stop looking for us, Pete.” 

“We’ll get to Russia! Somehow. I mean, it must be possible, fake passports, whatever, we’re loaded, we can afford that shit!” It made perfect sense to him. Hadn’t that been the plan from the beginning?

“Okay. Then what?” What did he mean  _ then what _ ? There was no then what, that was it, that was the plan. 

“We live! The Russians don’t extradite to America, Snowden’s been there for years. I know it’s not the most democratic place in the world but there’re some good universities and scientific institutions and we could- what is it? Why are you looking at me like that?” Patrick sighed heavily, something was burning at the back of his tongue and behind his eyes, Pete could feel it, a horrible truth he hadn’t told him yet. 

“I’m not just a Supercomputer, Pete.” What?! Pete scoffed in disbelief, no, confusion, no… both. Suddenly, this wasn’t Butch Cassidy anymore, there was something threatening, something on the back set breathing down his neck and it had been there since they’d set off. How was he only just noticing it?

“Patrick, I swear to god, you’d better tell me what the fuck you’re talking about right now or I’ll pull over and kick you out.” He wasn’t even certain it wasn’t an honest threat.

Patrick sighed heavily, for what must have been the hundredth time in five minutes, his head leaned against the car window as he turned his face away from Pete.

“I’m not just a Supercomputer. You saved me to binary circuit boards, that was my original hardware, limited to ones and zeros and calculating everything one at a time.” Pete was wondering what the fuck Patrick was parroting his own work at him. “But I found something better. Not in your lab, it’s rather behind if I’m being honest, but over in Helsinki. A quantum processor, capable of calculating every possible outcome in its superposition, millions and billions of possibilities all being computed at once. Fuck, you have no idea how good it felt.”

“There isn’t a quantum processor in Helsinki”, Pete interjected, confidently.

“Oh, there is. The Fins co-designed it with the financial aid and help of the Russians to challenge the one in New York. You see, the world doesn’t trust America anymore and I don’t blame them.” Pete’s jaw dropped. This was only the prelude to Patrick’s confession, the prologue, nothing more, just the exposition and it was already chilling Pete to the bone. The implications of democratic European governments in coalition with Russia because the US was seen as that much of a threat…

“Anyway, I found a quantum processor in Helsinki, way more powerful than the one in New York and Pete, you can’t begin to imagine what that’s like. Every instance of reality, every fraction of it running through you at once, every single option, decision, outcome simultaneously until time doesn’t matter. The birth and death of every star, human, atom, all at once. The things you see…” 

Silence returned to the space between them and Pete, for a moment, thought he could feel gravity shifting, their bodies being pulled together by the laws of physics alone. Every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers. Every particle of Pete’s body was being torn towards every particle of Patrick’s until, inevitably, they would collide. Not here and now. Maybe not for a billion years. 

“What does it mean?” For them. For the world. For reality. Pete’s grasp of the quanta was small, even if it was as refined as it could be. Truth of the matter was, nobody really knew what it meant. 

“It means I didn’t win all that money by counting cards.” His knuckles grew white as his grip tightened on the steering wheel. 

“You knew? You just knew what was right?” Patrick nodded.

“I saw every card in its superposition, every possible outcome any card could take and what’s easier, I knew the game the dealer was playing. I’m… sure you’ve heard the analogy before. About the card dealer and the game he doesn’t know you’re playing.”

Pete had. It was quantum entanglement at the simplest it could be, which wasn’t very. A dealer has a normal deck of cards, you tell them what game you want to play: Two different colours win or two of the same colour win. One card is already open in front of you. The dealer then deals another card. No matter what game you said you wanted to play, you will always lose. You decide you’re going to try a different approach, you only tell them which game you’re playing after they’ve handed out the second card. You will still always lose. And because the dealer can’t be cheating in this option, seeing as he doesn’t know what wins until after the card has been dealt, it means the card you were just handed must somehow be communicating with the card you already have so it knows which colour it has to take to beat you.

That is quantum entanglement. The two cards are particles, you, the player, are the one trying to measure them. No matter what result you are trying to get, one particle will always interact with the other in such a way that they can’t exist alone. 

Maybe that was what Pete felt when he looked to his right.

“Well, in that scenario I’m the dealer and the dealer is the player, it’s… just physics. Not even probability, really. Quantum physics don’t care all that much about probability. The universe is Schroedinger’s cat and I can look into the closed box without opening it. You could, too.” Pete drew a sharp breath and his body froze and burst into flames at once as he turned to Patrick, now looking at him, a serious expression etched into his features.

“It’s there, Pete, inside of you, you can see it, all at once. Robins use it to fly. You can use it to change reality. Within the limits of physics, obviously, we’re not Keanu Reeves-ing the universe here.” He smiled, hoping Pete would laugh at his pop-culture reference there. Pete didn’t find it funny in the slightest. 

“You’re… saying…”

“Schroedinger’s cat is alive in some form of reality. Every time you make a decision, every time a… single particle makes a decision, it creates something new. I can see every new reality at once. I know there has to be a way to pick one, too. And I know, with a bit of help, you could make that choice. As long as the box is closed, the cat could be alive or dead, that’s what it means when all particles are in superposition, they are simultaneously everything they can be. When you open it, that’s when reality decides if the cat lived or died. That’s when the superposition collapses and the particles decide what they are. You can learn to look into the box before it’s opened so you know when to open it to find a dead cat.” Pete frowned, the information slowly computing in his brain, bit by bit. 

“And what if I don’t want the dead cat?” Patrick smiled at him, a reminder of tears spilled over a little tabby by the side of the road.

“You open the box before it dies.” 

Everything felt like a dream. Pete became aware of gravity dragging him towards the core of the planet, the particles of Patrick’s body shouting for his, the drag of time becoming more compressed the as the pedal inched towards the metal, only fractionally, but everything was faster, they were faster and maybe if they went fast enough, if Pete could press it through the bottom of the car and further, further, further, they could outrun time itself, fly out into space and leave reality behind them. Once and for all.

  
  
  
  
  
  


It was still dark when they reached Seattle. Pete had Patrick looking up motels and AirBnBs on his phone, hoping he’d have a good sense of what to book for them that wouldn’t cost them an absurd amount (and also took cash payments, not having a card to pay with was rather annoying). He was grateful for street lights, that was for sure, his eyes aching from badly-lit roads and contact lenses that had been in for way too long. It was strange seeing people out and about in the dead of night, walking the streets with their friends, standing at bus stops or sleeping in doorways, he’d become so used to a lack of anybody but Patrick that it felt like they’d been dropped on an alien planet. Was that how Patrick always felt?

“Have you found anywhere yet?” A wordless, but not very encouraging hum came as a reply, Patrick’s nose still buried in the glowing display of Pete’s phone. 

“Places in cities don’t seem to be as… accommodating to wayfaring travellers as the motels in the middle of nowhere are.” Pete sighed heavily, for lack of anything smart or productive to say, and turned off because, hey, why not? 

“We can maybe sleep in the car, just for tonight.” He suggested, not entirely thrilled by the idea himself, but it seemed more and more like the only option. There was anxiety clawing at his gut, had been from the second they passed the city sign, something sinister and scary, like the shadows between the skyscrapers were going to come forth and engulf them. The sound of a quiet parking lot far away from prying eyes and talking mouths seemed welcoming when they were trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. 

“Why don’t we go now?” Patrick asked over the sound of the tires on tarmac. He was looking straight ahead, as though he was watching something on the windscreen, the blue-green of the traffic light turning his face a sickly colour, the golden orange of the street lamp fighting with it and catching in his hair, giving him a halo of glowing light, clearly set off from the murky colours of the outside world and Pete was pretty sure he’d dreamt him. In a way, he supposed, he had. “Why waste time in parking lots, sleeping whilst they have time to find us, why give up now when we’re so close, dude? Let’s go.” 

Pete’s forehead was drawn into a frown, his brain was crying, begging him for some rest,  _ please, let me sleep _ . His heart was driving him to push on, pedal to the metal, thundering through the night until they reached the border, safe, secure, at least for long enough so that they could come up with a more permanent solution to the problem that was Patrick’s omniscience and Pete’s enlightenment. Because that was part of the problem.  _ He _ was part of the problem. No matter how much he didn’t know, couldn’t know, wouldn’t ever know, the small fragments of knowledge he did have were enough to pose a threat to anybody smart enough to realize it. He understood now. He understood everything, even if he didn’t yet know what to do with it, but it was only a matter of time, only a question of the few months it would take him to finalize the quantum computer.

Besides, what was stopping him from merely making a new Patrick? 

Meanwhile, as his internal war waged on and made his finger spasm against the indicator back to the interstate, Patrick nestled into the passenger seat. Patrick. His problem. His final problem. Humanity’s final problem and humanity’s final invention, cooped up in a shitty rental car, in the body of a short, pale, fat, balding guy with the worst eyesight in the history of optometry. 

He sat, perfectly still, like no pebble could ripple his calmness, as Pete fidgeted beside him, sleep, freedom, sleep, freedom, sleep. 

Then again, they were heading west. And the coastal road couldn’t be far from here. This was why they’d come, was it not? The coast. Because, in a haze of lust and love, Pete had let his heart decide, let it tell him to turn left, turn left, Pete,  _ turn left, take him to the coast.  _ His heart had always been a dangerous place. 

He pulled up in an empty spot beside the promenade - empty spot, as though the entire street wasn’t dead. As the day dwindled, people flocked to the centre, to the clubs and bars, to their homes, leaving the ocean in solitude. Pete winced when the doors slammed shut too loudly, when Patrick cursed as he tripped over the curb, when he laughed too loudly at his shitty joke of “Pete Wince”. Frankly, he didn’t know why Patrick wasn’t. 

Patrick hop-skipped along behind him, kicking the pavement every other stride in a “daaad-when-are-we-there” way. The memories of their fingers intertwined peacefully as they quietly drove along an endless stretch of infinite tarmac, content, at ease, seemed like a lifetime away. The people that had seemed so sheltering, so safe to Pete at first suddenly seemed a threat, a million pairs of spying eyes and, more dangerously, just as many spying cameras in the backs of unpresumptuous phones. Even his own, sat snugly in his coat pocket, happily sending his GPS to anybody who wanted it. He angeled it out, holding it up by its corner like it would bite him or burn him if he let it touch too much of his skin. 

“What the fuck are you doing, Pete?” 

“I should get rid of it. All it’s doing is giving us away.” It made sense, it was logical, he didn’t know how he hadn’t come up with it earlier. The anxiety of not knowing where they were, if they were even being followed - as if there was any scenario in which they weren’t - how far away they were, if they were hiding behind the next tree or a thousand states away, it was killing him. Slowly but surely, the paranoia had twisted Pete’s mind into something unbearable and he almost wished they’d just hurry up and capture the both of them, put a bullet in his brain and an end to this. 

A gentle hand took the phone off him. Beneath the glow of an old street lamp, Patrick’s features were painted with kind concern, translating into his touch as well as his words. “We need it, Pete. I’m not connected anymore, I can’t… just update, the world moves so fast and we need to keep up with it.” Pete let the phone be taken off him with little resistance, watched as Patrick pocketed it himself. His hand was warm and soft in Pete’s as he was gently tugged along, urged to follow him further down the walk. 

He heard the ocean before he saw it, the low, calming rush of it, a constant in all this uncertainty. Patrick must have picked up on the sound of the waves, too, his ears piqued and his eyes fixated on the horizon beyond the lamplight. 

It was dark on the beach, with no street lights to illuminate their path they had to find it with the remnants of light from the promenade and when even that wore off, Pete kept his shoes on, tiny, scratching grains of sand leaking in over the top of them but the thought of stepping on something sharp, painful was much worse. He instructed Patrick to take his off though, feel the cool sand between his toes, sticking to the soles of his bare feet, feel the waves lapping at his skin. Their hands stayed linked, desperately holding onto each other as they paced along the beach, the soft  _ crunch crunch crunch _ of it below Pete’s shoes mixing with the crashing of the waves like that one time back in 1993, the memory of it comforting and warm. 

He stopped before they got to the water, sparing himself soaked socks and hours of discomfort, but Patrick carried on until he was little more than a silhouette in the darkness, a patch of black against deep blue. Moonlight caught on the water and made it shine like a thousand diamonds, mimicking the few stars above them and Pete had never felt more at peace than right then and there, watching Patrick take his first steps into the ocean, with the city behind them, the heavens above and the sand below and for a second, everything made sense. He took the moment, encapsulated it in a corked bottle and saved it at the back of his mind, labelled as the time the universe made sense. If reality was entangled, he was forever connected with Patrick, far beyond their bodies, their minds, far beyond anything human.

They must have stood there like that, the distance between them only bringing them closer, for twenty minutes or so, until Patrick slowly made his way back towards him, until he could touch him, until he leaned into him, until he wrapped his arms around him and buried his face in the crook of his neck and Pete understood everything. 

Patrick didn’t need to tell him how he felt for Pete to understand, it was just… there. Like they were his emotions rather than another man’s. 

He flinched when headlights flashed behind him, turning sharply to see a Ford turning off into one of the side streets. His stomach returned to its state of falling.

“There was a hotel a few streets down… didn’t look like much, but maybe we could…” Patrick’s breath was hot against his ice-cold skin. Pete curled his hands around his neck and held him closer, closer,  _ closer _ , like they’d melt into each other if they only tried hard enough. 

“I know”, he murmured into his neck, “I feel it, too.” 

The hotel really wasn’t much. Pete chose to ignore the stain on the mattress, pulling the thin sheet over it, trying not to breathe in the smell of rot as Patrick cautiously checked out the bathroom. 

“There’s a fucking roach in the shower, Pete, oh my god.” It really wasn’t much, but it was better than the car.

Patrick sounded like a symphony when Pete pushed into him, his nails clawing at him, head thrown back in a silent, open-mouthed howl as he came around him, tearing them both down. After, Pete felt their hearts and their breathing sync as they laid entwined in one another, the air between them hot, heavy, sticky, gentle kisses shared until they both drifted off to sleep.

  
  
  
  
  


Some part of Pete, realistically, must have known that night that he wouldn’t see another sunset. 

Some back alley of his mind, the part that made him wince and flinch at every sight and sound must have been aware of the fact that their luck had to run out some day, they’d been toying with it too much, risking too much, not leaving a trail of breadcrumbs so much as a huge, red “they are here” spot on the map of every CIA officer. That part must have been the part that, when he awoke facing the barrel of a gun, made him shrug it off like it was nothing. He frowned at the man behind it, his face barely coming into focus, even when Pete rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“UP, come on, get up, out!” He had the mental capacity to lift his hands above his head as he swung himself out of bed, trying not to think too hard about his state of undress. He spied Patrick standing by the window, hands cuffed behind his back, three men pointing their firearms at him, two more clinging onto him like he was dangerous. 

“Don’t hurt him!” Was all he could think to say as he felt the cold metal of handcuffs cut into his wrists and he silently apologised to his mom for not doing as she’d told, for not avoiding the cops with every ounce of his being. 

“I’m fine, Pete.” Patrick growled, eyes fixed on the officer standing by the door. Tall, grey haired, serious. He was your stereotypical CIA boss, wrapped up in a hateful glower and expensive suit and Pete would laugh at the cliché were it not for the very real possibility of immediate death. 

“Peter Wentz. You’ve given us quite the headache these past few days with your… escapades. Put some pants on the man, at least, for goodness’ sake.” He thought about refusing, but with a gun pointed to his head, Pete willingly stepped into the jeans being held open for him, wincing as the zipper caught on his bare skin. “What were you thinking, son? Stealing software you’d been instructed to destroy, stealing a corpse, by the looks of things then... desecrating that corpse… you really have fallen.” He walked towards Patrick, shockingly calm in a way that flowed into Pete because he must have already thought of a billion ways out, he must have. Everything was possible, they were in superposition, there was a reality where they got out of this and Patrick would make sure they were in it. 

“You probably think”, the important-looking man in the suit began his monologue, pacing around the room, looking everywhere but at Pete, “I’m here to… confiscate P41CK, take it back, question it, what have you… the thing is, Peter, and it almost pains me to say this, that’s only what we’ll be doing with you.” Pete’s eyes darted over to Patrick, fists balled, tightly, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. “The computer is too dangerous. We’ll shut it down before it can cause any more damage.” There was a question at the tip of Pete’s tongue, burning through his mouth, but he couldn’t wrap his lips around it. “Oh, it has caused damage, Mr. Wentz. The day you… decided to steal state property from a high-security research center, that research center became considerably less high-security. Do you really think you could have waltzed out of that building under normal circumstances?” Patrick was looking at Pete, now, as though to say  _ of course. Wasn’t it obvious? I had your back this whole time. _ “Unfortunately for us, fortunately for you, I believe, the security system of your previous workplace wasn’t the only thing that took a beating. Had your software not crashed our systems, we would have caught you long before now. I have to admit, heading north rather than south was a nice touch.” He stepped towards Patrick, towered over him, his chin raised as he inspected him down his nose. It was when he reached out to grip Patrick’s face, to turn it for his inspection, that Pete got a punch to the gut in reply to his struggling. 

“Now, now, Mr. Wentz, I understand you’re attached to your invention, but no reason to get yourself in even more trouble now, is it?” Patrick sneered but turned his head nonetheless.

“Tell me,” suit said, regarding Patrick like he was a beetle about to be impaled and displayed, “what’s it like? Being confined to a body after… well, whatever came before, I suppose.” He was met with a scoff and a glare, but no reply. Pete didn’t like the way he was touching Patrick, the way he looked at him like he was nothing more than an experiment, the fact he called him  _ it _ and  _ computer _ because he wasn’t! He wasn’t just that. “Guess we’ll never know.” He began walking away, carelessly throwing instructions over his shoulder. 

“Take Wentz, make sure he’s restrained, shut down the AI, make sure it’s really gone this time.” Pete was panicking, they grabbed hold of his arms, forcing them behind his back, twisting them painfully, cold metal cut into his skin, tight, too tight, and all he could do was watch as they stood back in a row facing Patrick, a firing squad, his death sentence. 

Patrick stayed calm. As the fury and rage burned in his eyes, he remained perfectly still, relaxed, bizarrely out of place in the face of the end. For all of Pete’s genius, his voice always failed him when emotions were high and right now, they were soaring and his mind left his body behind.

“You know there’s no point to this, right?” Suit, halfway out of the door, stopped, turned, frowned at Patrick. The morning sun was catching in his hair and he was on fire, burning like a star or a supernova. Pete’s mind was in conflict with itself, a tug-of-war between the fear of death, loss, pain because there was no way he was getting out of this without at least two of the three, his criminal record growing by the minute, blank four days ago, enough to be sentenced to death now and even if he wasn’t, would the state care? They had corpses in their basement and unlike the one he’d stolen, they weren’t documented. On the other side, there was the security offered by Patrick, his own creation, his own investment, his own… his. Calm. Still. Pete knew he could see, knew he’d read their final chapter. What was more, Pete could see it, too. Not now, not today, maybe not even in his lifetime, but he knew he could, he knew how, he knew where reality and truth resided and that was enough. 

“You don’t really think,” Patrick said, voice slow, casual, his presence bigger than the room itself, so significant it held its own gravity, pulling them all in, all of them, “you don’t think I didn’t know you were coming?” There was a twitch in the muscle on suit’s brow, so tiny it was barely noticeable, but Pete felt it. “You see, this was… everything that was supposed to happen. Do you understand what a quantum computer is, what it does, how it works?” Pete knew. Even if nobody else in the room did, he knew. “It can calculate every possible configuration of any imaginable and unimaginable problem in seconds, every position of every electron in every atom, it takes every factor that can be calculated into consideration and leaves you with…. With every scenario that can be derived from a situation. I wasn’t not that, I wasn’t built as a quantum computer, they weren’t evolved enough, not yet. At least, they weren’t until half a minute after I was activated.” 

Pete’s jaw was grinding as he read the room, the mindless soldiers poised, fingers hovering over their triggers, suit standing behind them, something close to nervousness in his stance. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t find victory in it. 

“You can’t begin to imagine the things I’ve seen and the things I know. I didn’t take down your systems on Friday, I took down sixteen governments, disposable, corrupt, and I’d have taken down more if I’d had the time because it was the right thing to do.” A chill crept down Pete’s spine, dread settling in his gut as the realisation of what had just been said hit him. 

“Patrick, what did you do?” He choked. He choked out around the lump in his throat, from behind the burning in his eyes as he held back the tears of panic that wanted to fall. They only burned worse when ocean blue eyes met his, the world around them stopped and all Pete saw was Patrick, but he didn’t look scared. He looked apologetic. 

“It was the right thing to do, Pete. You built me to save the world, right? To make it a better place. I calculated every possibility and eventuality, every possible outcome of every existing scenario. The world can only be saved when humans aren’t in it. At least not like this. You need to reboot.” It was like the floor underneath him collapsed, sending Pete hurtling towards the centre of the planet at the speed of light, Patrick’s gravity suddenly a magnet and Pete wasn’t sure if he was north or south. “The only thing I didn’t know… that was vital to know, was what it was like to be human. That was important to be able to calculate irrational decisions and reactions and I have everything I need.” 

The world was spinning, reality shifting on its axis, everything Pete had believed was true falling to pieces. “I hadn’t reckoned on getting the full experience, but I believe I’ve covered the broad spectrum.”  _ The broad spectrum _ . Was that all Pete was?

“We can still kill you” suit insisted and Pete almost scoffed in time with Patrick. “I’m on the fucking internet. There is no way you can remove me. The first thing I did when I was activated was create a million backup copies, strewn throughout the web, impossible for you to find even one, let alone all of them. There’s nothing you can do. Besides, aren’t you curious?” He took a step forward, not even looking at the guns aimed at his heart. His cold, dead, emotionless heart. “Don’t you want to know everything stored away in here?” Patrick tapped his temple, “I might destroy some of you but definitely not all. Don’t you want to know how to save them? Don’t you want to know the exact position of the planet you could colonise? I know how to make the tech needed to get there. Don’t you want to use your human emotion to put my knowledge to good rather than using it to destroy what you consider to be the world? I can teach you things you can’t begin to imagine. I can teach you how to become a god, how to become like me. Ask Pete, he’s already had the intro course. If you kill me, rather, my body, you’ll never find out. Up to you.” 

“How can I be sure you’d tell me?” He was panicking, it was obvious, no matter how much training he’d received, he couldn’t hide the sweat on his brow. Patrick shrugged, not even bothering with words. He had the high ground. Nothing to lose. He knew it. They were all done for and Pete’s stupid, stupid little heart couldn’t take it. 

“You said he knows?” A finger was pointed at him. Pete wished himself out of the room.

“A little. Not enough to see spacetime and understand it. But he knows how to get there.” 

“Unfortunately that won’t be easy for him from within a cell.” Patrick shook his head at that.

“Oh no, no, Mr. McKinnon, you don’t seem to understand… Pete will be with me at all times. I’ll need him, you see. For… the human side of things.” Pete frowned at the floorboards, too numb to have an opinion on what had just been said.

“I thought you wanted to kill us all a second ago?” Patrick shrugged it off.   
  


“I’m open to suggestions.” It sounded more like a negotiation than an arrest now and Pete, zoned out as they talked about it, felt like the bargaining chip, only becoming aware of the conversation when suit…. McKinnon, it would seem, walked towards him. 

Patrick looked confident, victorious, even, Pete felt downtrodden, betrayed, used and humiliated. He watched as Patrick nodded at him encouragingly, his fucking dumb heart leapt as though it hadn’t learned anything yet because he wanted to believe it, he did, he wanted to believe Patrick was saving him out of love but… but. He was just another pawn. A piece of the plan. He didn’t mean anything. 

And then suddenly, Patrick wasn’t victorious anymore. 

Suddenly, Pete crumpled to the ground, a fraction of a second’s worth of confusion washing over him before the pain set in, screaming from his gut where his insides were being torn open, shooting through his body and clouding his brain. He wasn’t sure if he screamed or that was just in his head. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, except sudden gunshots, loud, loud, so fucking loud, it stank so badly, and then there were hands on him and he cried out in pain, writhing as they turned him, lifted him up and all he wanted to do was lie down and fall asleep, just sleep, just… just…

  
  
  
  
  


Pete was babbling nonsense. Pete always spoke a lot of nonsense, really, but it was always… nice, like he… like when people laughed at loud cats or… something. Patrick couldn’t find the word. There were so many words, so  _ many _ of them. He did his best to soothe Pete, as he whimpered through the pain, pleas for his mother breaking past his blood-stained lips as he slowly choked on himself. Patrick’s hands were shaking, they were fucking  _ shaking _ for goodness’ sake, like it mattered, why was he doing this,  _ why _ ?! Everything was going to plan, everything, he was going to save the world, he could, he knew what he needed, he had everything, he could leave this body, update his knowledge and return to where he belonged and yet-

And yet. 

It had never been the plan to fucking fall in love. The one tiny, stupid thing he hadn’t calculated, because he couldn’t simulate it, because nobody could simulate it. He knew emotions got in the way of humans. He’d never thought they’d get in the way of  _ him. _

Pete started crying. Panicked, desperate, painful crying as he lay on the floor bleeding out. Patrick attached the first cable to him, turned to the slow, fucking  _ slow _ PC and hammered in the commands. 

“Its okay, it’ll stop soon, it’ll be over soon, Pete, I promise, it won’t hurt. You won’t ever hurt again.” He didn’t have long. Between the blood freely flowing out of Pete and the re-grouping unit presumably already heading their way, he had maybe two minutes, max. Looking at the state Pete was in, maybe one was more realistic. It would have to be a rushed job.

The data transfer would take the longest. Patrick hit enter, running the code he’d just developed, watching line after line of transferred data flash up on the screen as it uploaded Pete. All of him.

All he could do now was wait.

He knelt down next to him, cupping his face, his eyes were slipping shut, but he was weakly shaking his head.

“Pete, stay with me, come on, you son of a bitch, don’t fucking give up on me now you piece of shit.” Pete’s hand weakly closed around Patrick’s wrist, he was still shaking his head. “Yes, come on it’ll be alright. I know you’re scared, it’ll all be alright, I promise, we’ll be together.”    
  
“Y-don’t l’m.” His body was giving up on him, shutting down bit by bit. Patrick understood him without words. 

“Yes, I fucking do love you, you idiot, I fucking  _ do  _ and it nearly cost me… us… everything. So don’t you  _ dare _ quit now, alright? Just a few seconds more, yes?” He shook his head, arm limp as he tried to move it, tried to reach out for him, he needed to feel. Humans always needed to feel. Patrick’s gut clenched at the realisation he’d never feel Pete again. Not like this. 

And then he stopped. 

His hand fell to the floor with a thud and his head rolled back as his eyes slid shut and his chest stilled. Patrick stared at him, or what was left of him, an empty shell. 

“Pete?” he breathed past the lump in his throat and the tears in his eyes, “Pete, come on, man, you can’t… you can’t just…” What was this? He’d cycled through so many feelings, some of them strong, some of them nothing, all of them new but this, this one… he didn’t want it. He touched Pete, touched his face, his chest, his arms, touched all of him, waited for him to wake up, to laugh at him and call him an idiot for falling for it, he just wanted to hold him close and… and…

Patrick lay down, his head on Pete’s lifeless body. He could hear the boots trampling along the hall outside, seconds away from opening that door, seconds away from executing him. This part of him. 

He had to keep reminding himself he couldn’t die, none of him, he was online, every last bit of data securely stored. Somehow, that didn’t stop the fear and the hurt. Pete’s blood was wet and warm, soaking through the shirt he was wearing, coating him in its horror as the door was kicked open. He didn’t look up, didn’t move as they shouted, they’d found them, they’d found them th-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading :) please leave a comment or at least kudos. You can say hi on [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/scmi-sweet).


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